This is the first attempt to delineate the synthetic field of the theoretical study of information, treating information as the basic phenomenon on the fundamental level of the world, encompassing nature, technology, individuals and society. The exploration of information is done within Info-computational approaches, to natural and social phenomena such as Bioinformatics, Information Physics, Informational Chemistry, Computational Physics, Cognitive and Social sciences, with special emphasis on interdisciplinary, crossdisciplinary and transdisciplinary knowledge. The book presents results of collaboration across research fields within info-computational and info-structural frameworks, in attempt to better theoretically and conceptually capture the phenomenon of information and its dynamics (such as computation and communication), as they appear on different levels of organization, on different scales and in different contexts. Contents: Introduction (Mark Burgin and Gordana Dodig-Crnković) Foundations of Information: A Multiscale Taxonomy of Information in the World (Mark Burgin and Gordana Dodig-Crnković) Regeneration of Information as Forced Expansion (Meir Buzaglo) Why is Entropy not Enough? – Good Emerges from the Relaxation between Order and Disorder (Wu Kun and Wang Jian) Qualitative Stance, Effective Procedures and Common Sense Computation (Gianmarco Tuccini, Roberta Lanfredini, and Luca Baronti) A Theory of Semantic Information in the Context of its Ecology (Yixin Zhong and Gordana Dodig-Crnković) Information as a Natural Phenomenon: The 'No Information at a Distance' Principle and Local Mathematics: Some Effects on Physics and Geometry (Paul Benioff) The Structure of the World, Unity of Nature and the Problem of Time (Rafael Capurro and Mark Burgin) The Debt of Natural Science: An Interview with Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker (Rafael Capurro) The Molecular Linguistics of DNA: Letters, Words, Sentences, Texts, and their Meanings (Sungchul Ji) The Biology of Information (Robert K Logan) Towards a New Information Thinking — Biologically Inspired (Jorge Navarro and Pedro C Marijuán) Studies on Molecular Signaling Network Devices (Walter Riofrío) Evolution of Genetic Information without Error Replication (Guenther Witzany) Cognition and Intelligence in Natural and Artificial Systems: Information Processing by Structural Machines (Mark Burgin) Consciousness and Information — Before or After the Event (Ron Cottam and Roger Vounckx) Convergence of Natural Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence (Rao Mikkilineni) Social, Cultural, Ethical and Legal Aspects of Information: A Comparative Analysis of Traditional Western and Chinese Music from the Perspective of Complex Information System Theory (Gengxian Cao and Donghe Li) A Reasonable Model of Complexity for the Legal Domain (Cornelis N J de Vey Mestdagh) Reform and Innovation: The Social Sciences Research in Big Data Times (Ouyang Kang) The Differentia Specifica of Interhuman Communications: Luhmann and the Sociological Reflection of Information Theory (Loet Leydesdorff) Li Erqu's Theory on Epistemology and Gong Fu Ontology (Jun Liu) Law as Information and the Impact of Information Technologies (Ugo Pagallo) Information and Openness (Tomáš Sigmund) Readership: Graduate students and researchers in Information Theory.Information Science;Information Theory;Physics;Biology;Semantics;Computation;Ontology;Evolution;Networks;Artificial Intelligence;Complexity;Ecology0 Key Features: It covers the broadest range of phenomena related to information, with their structures and processes, as well as meta-level investigation of the nature of the study of information including its logic, metatheory and methodologiesIt provides the context and the substrate for research fields such as General Information Science, Practical Information Studies, Information Natural Sciences, and Information Social Sciences, developing information perspective on natural sciences, cognitive, social and ecological studiesIt builds the foundation for further studies into informational phenomena and their dynamics, that will increase in the future, in society on a whole. In particular, it is relevant for the understanding of technological developments and scientific progress, which becomes increasingly digitalized, that is, information-based
