Cell Language Theory, The: Connecting Mind And Matter

16 The Cell Language Theory: Connecting Mind and Matter

b2861 The Cell Language Theory: Connecting Mind and Matter “6x9”

(7) A communication system usually consists of the following

components:

Message source

Encoder

Channel

Decoder

Receiver (or User)

(8) There are three aspects to information:

Quantity (How much information can this USB flash drive store?)

Meaning (What is the meaning of the information carried by this

message?)

Value (How valuable is the information contained in this message?)

(9) There are three subdisciplines of information theory:

Syntactics (the rules governing the structure of messages)

Semantics (the rules governing the relation between information and its

referents)

Pragmatics (the effects that information has on the user. What does

the user do with the information received, and how?)

2.2.2 Shannon Information (ISh)

There are many ways to calculate the amount of information [37,

pp. 129–134]. The most widely used formula was proposed by

C. Shannon in 1948 [38]. The amount of information, ISh, carried by a

message can be readily calculated using a simplified form, Eq. (2.4),

which is derived from Eq. (2.7) by assuming that all choices are equally

probable:

ISh = log 2 (W 0 / W), (2.4)

where W 0 is the total number of possible messages (or choices) available

for selection and W is the number of messages actually selected and sent

to the receiver. Clearly, I is maximal when W = 1. Thus, the maximum

amount of the information that a message can carry is given by

ISh = log 2 W 0. (2.5)

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