Jon Barwise, Jerry Seligman.
Information Flow: the logic of distributed systems.
CUP. 1997
Information is a central topic in computer science, cognitive science, and philosophy.
In spite of its importance in the “information age,”
there is no consensus on what information is,
what makes it possible, and what it means for one medium to carry information about another.
Drawing on ideas from mathematics, computer science, and philosophy,
this book addresses the structure of information and its place in society.
The authors, observing that information flow is possible only within a connected distribution system, provide a mathematically rigorous, philosophically sound foundation for a science of information. They illustrate their theory by applying it to a wide range of phenomena, from file transfer to DNA, from quantum mechanics to speech act theory. An important interdisciplinary text, this book is ideal for graduate students and researchers in mathematics, computer science, philosophy, linguistics, logic, and cognitive science.