PART VII 



THE STATUS OF INFORMATION THEORY 



IN BIOLOGY* 



A Round Table Discussion 



H. AUERBACH, C. EhRET, S. FrEED, L. S. FrISHKOPF, E. E. jACOBSf, B. N. 



Jaroslow, p. D. Klein, A. L. Koch, H. R. Mahler, H. Quastler, 



W. S. YAMAMOTOij: 



Edited by Henry Quastler 



Information theory is very strong on the negative side, i.e. in demonstrating 

 what cannot be done; on the positive side its apphcation to the study of Hving 

 things has not produced many results so far; it has not yet led to the discovery 

 of new facts, nor has its application to known facts been tested in critical 

 experiments. To date, a definitive and valid judgment of the value of infor- 

 mation theory in biology is not possible. 



The first attempts to apply information theory to biological studies have 

 been met with varying degrees of enthusiasm, ranging from outright rejection 

 to statements like : 'Information theory furnishes a person with a sort of thread 

 which would allow him to sense out a continuum in the order of the universe' ; 

 'A means of relating the existence of life to the non-existence of fife' ; 'A quest 

 for regularities in irregular phenomena'. This is an extremely vast span of 

 reactions to a proposition of admittedly limited scope. Many of the reactions 

 refer not to information theory as such but more generally to interdisciplinary 

 endeavours, and to system sciences, both of which are characteristically 

 represented by information theory. 



Interdisciplinary meetings are always, or almost always, an exhilarating 

 experience to all. They allow some sub-groups of scientists of a number of 

 breeds to communicate with each other in a way that is in general impossible 

 with the rest of the breed to which the particular scientist belongs. To put it 

 another way, interdisciplinary meetings factor out scientists in a different way 

 than occurs normally, and allow them fruitfully so to aggregate. Information 

 theory, with its 'interdisciplinary' generalization of the entropy concept, 

 provides a common meeting group for many disciplines; what is more, it has 

 in many actual instances provided strong rapport between representatives 

 of widely separated disciplines. The value of the communications aspects 



* On the evening following the Conference, eleven participants gathered for an informal 

 session to discuss how they felt about the proceedings they had witnessed. The informal debate 

 which ensued was transcribed and re-arranged into a coherent account. In doing this the 

 editor tried to be objective. 



t Dept. of Physiological Chemistry, University of California. 



:|: School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. 



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