Peter Fleissner, Wolfgang Hofkirchner Emergent information Towards a unified information theory In: BioSystems 2-3(38)/1996, 243-248 CONTENTS: 1. Information science 2. Emergence 3. System dynamics 4. Semiosis, cognition, communication 5. Information References Abstract This paper proposes the restoration of information theory by means of a philosophy of evolutionary systems. What this philosophy implies for the conception of information may be called a multi-stage model, comprising both the history and the ordering of information processing by real-world systems. Such a unifying information concept may assist suitable research in the coming field of information science. Keywords: Emergentist philosophy; Evolutionary systems; Theory of information; Semiosis 1. Information science So far, no common information-concept has been agreed upon which might serve as a crystallisation nucleus for those sciences dealing with certain aspects of real-world information-processing manifestations; such a crystallisation nucleus would unify them and turn them into a single, though transdisciplinary information science. However, working out such a definition for the term information", thus promoting a general theory of information as distinct from the well-known information theory we have had so far, is an idea whose time has come (Hofkirchner, 1995). This work is actually part of an overall paradigm shift in science's world view, headed by the various theories of complex, non-linear, self-organising systems, and aimed at transcending the narrow boundaries of partialised disciplines towards unified theories which give an understanding of the world, while not giving up the expertise of specialised knowledge. The philosophical interpretation of the self-organisation theories is a proper background theory capable of restoring information theory as a theory of evolutionary systems exhibiting information processing. Something which may be called a multi-stage model of information can be derived from it. We try to sketch the boundary markers of such a model in brief. In the first step we deal with the philosophical essence of the background theory; in the second step with the implications of the background theory for system-theoretical considerations; in the third step with the implications of the refashioned system-thinking for semiotic theory and the theory of cognition and human communication; and in a final step with the implications of all that for a general theory of information. 2. Emergence The philosophical core of the background theory, though still to be elaborated, is an emergentist scheme of how the evolution of our world has taken place and how things are ordered according to that (cf. Blitz, 1992). Thus the theory of evolutionary systems is both historic and systematic: