The Concept of Information Seen from the Point of View of Physics and Synergetics

The word information is used with quite different meanings, for instance in ordinary language in the sense of message, etc., or in the scientific sense of Shannon. In the present contribution information is understood as a property emergent in complex systems and several possibilities for its interpretation are discussed. In order to attribute semantics to information, the way a message acts on a receiver is studied in the frame of dynamical systems. Another approach is suggested by synergetics where the concepts of order parameters and enslaving can be used to study the emergence of an information field which acts on the individual parts of the same system. In a way, here the receiver is identical with the emitter of information. A comparison between the role of this sort of information in the physical system “laser” and the biological system “slime mold” exhibits interesting aspects with respect to the interpretation of the meaning of information. As it appears, the meaning of information or its semantics is not fixed in an objective manner but depends on our human interpretation.