[Fis] Meaning

[Hans von Baeyer]

In my struggle to understand the meaning of "information" I sometimes
despair of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.  So it was a comfort
to come across the opening paragraph of the classic monograph  *An
Introduction to the Theory of Probability and its Applications, *by William
Feller (1950):

"Probability is a mathematical discipline with aims akin to those, for
example, of geometry and analytical mechanics.  In each field we must
carefully distinguish three aspects of the theory: a) The formal logical
content, b) the intuitive background, c) the applications.  The character,
and the charm, of the whole structure cannot be appreciated without
considering all three aspects in their proper relation."

I was reminded of Claude Shannon's disclaimer that he was not talking about
the "meaning" of information when he created communication theory.  The
word "intuition" in  Feller's scheme  is as slippery as the word "meaning
in Shannon's, but it carries less weighty, less philosophical, and more
individual, personal, idiosyncratic, more humane  implications. This
impression is underscored by the word "charm."

I will try to keep Feller's advice in mind in my own thinking about
Information.

Hans Christian von Baeyer
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