[Inquiry] Re: Extension x Comprehension = Information

[Jon Awbrey]

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ECI.  Reflective Note 1

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What Peirce achieved in this line of inquiry was to develop
a theory of information out of purely logical considerations.
The majority of the flashes of insight that he propagates in
1865-1866 will not be seen again until the first shots of our
own information and computing revolutions.  These are nothing
less than intimations of the "capacity limitations" of signals,
symbols, and their users, due in part to the physical nature of
actual sign tokens, and in part to the fact that we fallible and
mortal finite information creatures are forever out of existential
necessity forced to learn and to think under conditions of imperfect
information, and thus are we ever bound to "reason under uncertainty",
with all of the usual afflictions of biased opinion, partial knowledge,
and bounded rationality.  Strangely enough, it is the very improvements
in the speed and capacity of our computing and information media since
the early days of these revolutions that has brought on a reactionary
tendency to forget the basic principles on which the whole republic
of information is founded.  And thus it happens that Peirce's way
of viewing information is not just "enlightened for his time",
as people say, but enlightened also in comparison to ours.

Jon Awbrey

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