Book of Interest

[Sergio Navega]

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Hello, fellow compressionists,

I thought you would like to know about a recently published
book:

The Touchstone of Life
Molecular Information, Cell Communication and the 
Foundations of Life
by Werner R. Loewenstein
Oxford University Press (1999)

Loewenstein is a respectable and awarded scientist, currently
Director of the Laboratory of Cell Communication at the
Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Although the book is heavy on the biology of the cell, it
touches on aspects important to "the rest of us". It is
divided in 14 chapters and four parts:

Part one: Information and the origins of life
Part two: Information flow inside cells
Part three: Information flow between cells
Part four: The science of the peculiar

Page 89 deals with an interesting subject: "The Principle
of Evolutionary Information Economy". Got the gist?

Loewenstein bridges ideas from the origins of information
(in relation to entropy) and then explains how cells work their
way as information processors. Two principles are exposed
at that point of the book:

a) Biomolecular systems tend to minimize information expenditure
b) They evolve along paths maximizing information efficiency
 
I had only browsed the book, but it appears to be a solid 
foundation for the biological principles of compression of 
information.

Regards,
Sergio Navega.