Information: The New Language of Science

Hans Christian von Baeyer

ISBN 10: 0297607251 / ISBN 13: 9780297607250

Published by Weidenfeld & N., 2003

About this Item

Item in good condition. Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc.

Seller Inventory # 00060200667

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Information: The New Language of Science
• Publisher: Weidenfeld & N.
• Publication Date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0297607251
• ISBN 13: 9780297607250
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

The nuclear age has morphed into the information age. Information is a cool, sexy word: using it makes you feel smart. It proves that you are plugged in and technologically sophisticated. Al Gore cruises along the information highway, while media gurus ventilate about the information explosion and hucksters tout information technology. Information is unquestionably in. But what is information? Is it a scientifically useful concept? The slow emergence of the notion of information during the past half-century contrasts sharply with the birth of the energy concept a century-and-a-half ago. Then, in the brief span of twenty years, energy was invented, defined and established as a key element of physics, and more generally of science. We don t know what energy is, but we can describe it mathematically, measure it accurately, even market, regulate and tax it. In INFORMATION, Professor von Baeyer shows how information is becoming just as robust, and just as central to physics and biology, as energy is today. It is, he says, poised to replace matter as the primary stuff of the universe stuff that flows out of a tangible object, like a piano or a book or an atom, and, after a tortuous sequence of metamorphoses involving the senses, lodges in the conscious brain. If we can understand the nature of information, we will have taken the first step along the road that leads from objective reality to our understanding of it. We will have found the philosopher s stone the key that unlocks the secrets of the universe.

About the Author

Hans Christian von Baeyer is Chancellor Professor of Physics at the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia. His essays in Discover, The Sciences, Reader s Digest and The Gettysburg Review have won him several awards, including the 1990 Science Journalism Award of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a 1991 National Magazine Award. He has also written over seventy technical and popular articles.