Law of Conservation of Information
Dembski formulates and proposes a law of conservation of information as follows:
This strong proscriptive claim, that natural causes can only transmit CSI but never originate it, I call the Law of Conservation of Information. Immediate corollaries of the proposed law are the following:
- The specified complexity in a closed system of natural causes remains constant or decreases.
- The specified complexity cannot be generated spontaneously, originate endogenously or organize itself (as these terms are used in origins-of-life research).
- The specified complexity in a closed system of natural causes either has been in the system eternally or was at some point added exogenously (implying that the system, though now closed, was not always closed).
- In particular any closed system of natural causes that is also of finite duration received whatever specified complexity it contains before it became a closed system.
Dembski notes that the term "Law of Conservation of Information" was previously used by Peter Medawar in his book The Limits of Science (1984) "to describe the weaker claim that deterministic laws cannot produce novel information." The actual validity and utility of Dembski's proposed law are uncertain; it is neither widely used by the scientific community nor cited in mainstream scientific literature. A 2002 essay by Erik Tellgren provided a mathematical rebuttal of Dembski's law and concludes that it is "mathematically unsubstantiated."
Read more about this topic: Specified Complexity
Famous quotes containing the words law of, law, conservation and/or information:
“The law of nature is alternation for evermore. Each electrical state superinduces the opposite. The soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone for a season, that it may exalt its conversation or society.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Half the testimony in the Bobbitt case sounded like Sally Jesse Raphael. Juries watch programs like this and are ready to listen.”
—William Geimer, U.S. law educator. New York Times, p. B18 (January 28, 1994)
“A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.”
—Aristide Briand (1862–1932)
“The family circle has widened. The worldpool of information fathered by the electric media—movies, Telstar, flight—far surpasses any possible influence mom and dad can now bring to bear. Character no longer is shaped by only two earnest, fumbling experts. Now all the world’s a sage.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)