The event horizon of black holes has been considered to potentially store a record of all that has passed it. Even more speculative would be the record keeping role of entanglement and non-local correlations. Roger Penrose says “For many particle systems, almost the entire ‘information’ in the wavefunction is concerned with such matters!" If this is true, then there is a lot of record keeping or accounting that is going on behind the scenes which may not play a strong "classical" role in what we experience, but nonetheless may be a vast repository of information about our universe.

It would seem that the manifest adaptation by animals and plants implies some form record-keeping.

I find this question intriguing and somewhat perverse (in a good sense - intrigues, encouraged to think about the answer).

My answer is: YES. There are many examples of keeping records of facts and events by the Nature.

Let me give just two examples:

1 Annual rings of growth of trees, are the "chronicle" of local climate change.

2 The content of some chemical compounds in ice or snow, it is a kind of "notes" about changes in the atmosphere, which can be used to assess changes in environmental pollution over time.

Andrzej,

Both of your examples are excellent. In addition to what you have suggested, another record of events by Nature is

3. Sedmentary layers containing fossils.

The most extensive record in Nature is the geologic record. The history

of the Earth as recorded in the depositional layers. As human technology

advances especially in computer technology, the computers will be able to

write the History of the earth better than Man can perform this laborious task.

The History of the cosmos is even longer. it is written in the growth of galaxies,

the movement of materials , and the distribution of energy, at numerous wave

lengths.

Arno,

Rather than shoot for an understanding of computer-like nature-based systems, perhaps we should be looking toward an understanding of human memory, another rather astonishing record-keeper for nature.

I think there are lot of examples in nature which follows some kind of record keeping like in astronomy ... the best known comet Halley which is visible from Earth every after 75–76 years .or seasons

I am getting a feeling that somehow it may be related to the day to day like activities or some kind of natural twists like earth quake or volcanic activity ...lets say a volcano erupted there must be some reasons associated with its eruption .lets say \phi (represents the features that are possible cause of the eruption or the factors which caused that eruption like entropy or take any other factors) ..what i suggests is these features may be possibly affected by this "record keeping" thing of nature..when \phi exceeds some threshold(which is set by nature ) ,a certain phenomenon occurs....

bottom line is there is some system of nature which binds everything and correlates every thing with each other..that we still fails to find..May be I am wrong

Peter , Arno , Andrzej sir ??

Arno and Sarvesh,

Comets and asteroids would be interesting to conider. The debris collected from space by an asteroid provides a form of record keeping for the cosmos. Also, it now believed that the gold found near the surface of the earth came from a massive number of metiorites hitting the planet. In effect, gold deposits then serve as a record of local metiorite activity.

I Just entered this interesting discussion. There is a very important data record in nature which wasn´t mentioned yet. I mean the genetic code which is the result of evolution. The decoding of DNA sequences is a substantial part of modern science and technology and is surely managed to help mankind.

Thanks for devoted contribution of every respected researcher. A nice and interesting discussion is going here. Let go for another angle of question; Is there any record keeping existed at the level of matter & its atoms as well in Nature?

Just remember remaining radioactivity like primordial nuclides in soil, radiocarbon method calibrated eg. with the content in annual rings of trees, changes of natural nuclide abundance, which helped to discover the natural Oglu reactor, cosmic radiation explaining our universe.

The event horizon of black holes has been considered to potentially store a record of all that has passed it. Even more speculative would be the record keeping role of entanglement and non-local correlations. Roger Penrose says “For many particle systems, almost the entire ‘information’ in the wavefunction is concerned with such matters!" If this is true, then there is a lot of record keeping or accounting that is going on behind the scenes which may not play a strong "classical" role in what we experience, but nonetheless may be a vast repository of information about our universe.

We can only study observables, thus record. There is nothing else we can study.

Fossil, CMB, tree ring, even our visual perception is based on record on the retina.

I read all the answers with great interest. Indeed, a great theme and very informative read him. I have after reading so many interesting texts some summary comments. Perhaps the most general of these (and perhaps quite controversial) is that, for the reasons which I not know, most of us shoving examples of "chronicle" activity of the Nature, trying to reach the giant possible scale, and show first of all, that interesting for us are (only?) the "great" works of the Nature.

I think, that exist examples of Nature works, which are small in scale, but very important. From my point of view, the encoded by the Nature the "large-scale" information (for example: comets, asteroids, black hole (maybe), cosmic rays, ect.), are not for us, so important, how many little things, usually neglected in silence, such as for example the fact, that the northern sides of rocks and trees are overgrown with the moss.

I believe that we can make a valuable generalizations from these "small" works of Nature. The most important for us would probably be a generalization, that Nature does not know the concept of "minor things" and doing both "large" and "small" tasks with extreme care...

However, imperfect human nature often leads us to concentrate all forces on the things which we subjectively deemed as "great", but the "little things" we usually "sweep under the rug".

It is important to realize that such behavior of people is "unnatural "...

Not surprisingly, what has been completely missing from the discussion is that the "record keeping" in Nature cannot be based on various numeric entities, including functions, simply because numbers do not exist in Nature.

DNA

DNA is 'hardware', not the 'software'. ;--)

Lev,

I do not understand your oppinion about hard- and software. There is no software without hardware. The biological information is coded in the DNA.

Lev and Wielfried:

dna IS CODE!

that means information or record. To read it needs software. Software is just the instrument to get access. Dont discuss about hard- or software. Coding in essential.

@Andrzej Szymanski: ...The most important for us would probably be a generalization, that Nature does not know the concept of "minor things" and doing both "large" and "small" tasks with extreme care...

From what you have perceptively and excellently written, one might add that Nature does things--small things such as fossilisation of tiny, tiny animals and large things such as earthquakes--thoroughly. One might view fossilsation and earthquakes as examples of Nature's responses to environmental conditions and the enormous pressures on Nature's resources by Earth's inhabitants.

@Lev Goldfarb: ...numbers do not exist in Nature.

Agree, number do not exist in nature but varying amounts (quantities) of natural resources do exist in nature. For example, if one were interested in gold deposits,

one would find by panning for gold in various mountain streams that the number of granules in each sifted pan of water, sand and sediment will be invariably.

It does seem natural to view the varying number of granules of gold on a graduated scale (from single granule to several to hundreds of granules). Then we step in and view the quantities of granules of gold numerically. You can guess what happens

next.

James Peters: "number do not exist in nature but varying amounts (quantities) of natural resources do exist in nature."

I'm not sure what you are trying to say: if numbers do not exist in Nature, than the view of reality via numbers is of our own making.

What I was hinting about the DNA is that it is a tip of the iceberg as far as the biological information processing is concerned, i.e. it is by far not the full "record".

Whatever we say exist as designated by words in our natural language and designated by models in mathematical language are only meaningfull for us humans.

The idea of a number is an abstraction highly usefull for us humans for expressing important aspects of the world for us. I am convinced that there are billion of other intelligent species out there and they had to invented numbers and they also had to know about prime numbers etc . Numbers are certainly abstractions used in communication of all intelligent agents that exist in the universe and are surely part of any language out there. But number being necessary part of these languages has nothing to do with the Pythagorian/platonic notion that they are intrinsic to the world. There are intrinsic to any world of abstract communication about the world but not the the world previous to the emergence of actor wich explicitly communicate about the world. Numbers and all our words and our mathematical model exists in our communicative symbolic world and so naturally exist in the world but at the concrete level of existence below the symbolic world. It is to be expected that all the symbolic worlds on all planets where civilization have evolved have been constructed prior to their emergence into implicit form in the biological evolutionary process. The emergence of intelligence corresponding of the evolution of the biological capacity to make explicit what is biologically implicit in the sensory-motor systems of the living organisms.

@Lev Goldfarb :

the perceiption of varying amounts (quantities) naturally leads to numbers introduced by humans.

James, if you look at chapter 3 of http://www.cs.unb.ca/~goldfarb/BOOK.pdf you will see that numbers---as are all kinds of "record keeping" in Nature---are of temporal origin (and temporal structure).

Leo,

Many thanks for the link to your very interesting and well-written book. I just now had a chance to look at chapter 3. We are on the same page on the same of record keeping in nature. You write:

While the numeric representations of objects and processes in our present mathematics--and hence physics--are point-based, it appears what we need to replace this ubiquitous 'point' representation (of geomentric, or spatial origin) with an appropriate universal structure that must also become ubiquitous. This, it seems that the main theoretical difficulty has to do with the unprecedented need for the development of a new kind of mathematics, page 13 of your book.

Yes, agreed! The traditional abstract point in mathematics has no counterpart in nature. That is, an abstract point (from geometry or topology or algebra) has only location, not measurable content. What we need to follow up on what you have suggested is the notion of a physical point, which has both location and measurable content. Such a point is called a place by Martin Kovar, who also suggests how to topologise everything in terms of places. In my own work reflected in a book on the Topology of Digital Images (to be published by Springer in 2014), I suggest how to proximitise everything in terms of the closeness or remoteness of sets of picture points. The propose approach is easily extended to sets of physical points (see my recent posts on the thread Is Mathematics invented or discovered?).

James,

Thanks for the feedback!

However, I'm suggesting something much more radical: I'm suggesting that the 'real' structure, i.e. informational structure, is 'behind'/outside the space, and such structures serve as the blueprints for the spatial 'structures' that we see.

It is quite likely that no conventional ideas related to the concept of topological space or its various generalizations are applicable to such informational structures because they are of generative nature.

Lev,

Your post makes the situation clearer. Also, I apologize about writing Leo instead of Lev.

Please expalin what you mean by generative nature.

Arno,

I believe that any numeric constructions, including "imaginary numbers" don't have *direct* relevance to the way information is stored in Nature (events may exist but not the numbers).

James,

(By the way, Leo is the right English version of the Russian Lev.)

By "generativity", I mean that such entities (structs) are generated/constructed, by the central informational mechanism, *class representation*. It is hypothesized that it is responsible for the (dynamic) maintenance of the integrity of various classes of objects/processes by means of which the Universe is organized. So this informational/representational mechanism as well as the structs that it 'produces cannot be part of the spatial reality and should be stored in some form yet unknown to us.

Lev,

Good post. I see what you mean by "generative". Your idea is interesting.

Nature keeps climate records in the form of tree rings, the size and shape of the

leaves on trees, the type of vegetation, the thickness of sedimentary layers, the foot prints of animals, fossilized skeletons, and isotopes.

But remarkably---as Whitehead, Sheldrake and many others have anticipated---in addition to the above 'visible' records, it appears that Nature might store informationally much more complete records.

Any structures in nature: an electron, geological layers, a tree, a lung, a planet, a galaxy, the face of your mother, the surface of the earth, the hydrogen atom is a record of its formation. The structural layers are the history of the formation of the structure. Structural hierarchy is history. The past is the structure of the Universe in the Now.

Louis,

But the "structural hierarchy" is not stored explicitly---as in DNA, tree rings, etc.---so if it is stored, it must be stored in some, still uninvestigated, 'informational' form.

Lev,

Our theoretical models and our descriptions are these structures. I do not claim that the assumed structure is whatever representation we are using is truly the structure of nature. This is platonist. But for example in the case of our visual system, it is based on certain implicit assumptions about image structure. Are the images really have these structures? The only answer that can be given is a pragmatic one, the images have these structures as far as these implicit buil-in assumption of the sensory-motor system of the animal allow it to feed succesfully then it will survive as a good biological assumption. There is no limit in our hypothetical evolution towards more advance type of structure, in our scientific world how good is an assumption is based on its survival in the scientific scrutiny world.

Louis,

But the original question was "How does record keeping occur in nature?".

So if we want to address it, we have to take seriously the nature of the true representation in the Universe, and the talk of "structural hierarchy" will make scientific sense only in the formal 'language' of that underlying representation.

So the original question is, in fact, about the nature of this representational formalism.

Lev,

I am using language, words, and the word structure as if it is a concrete reality. Scientists manipulate their models as if they exists in Nature. But it is an necessary objectivisation. But like Kant, I consider all knowledge, all objectivisation as descriptions of appearances, usefull maps for interaction with the world, but the maps are not the territory, the phenomenal/appearance is not the noumenal/reality in itself. All we can do is coming with better maps, more unified maps, better objective representations.

In my theory of images, the surface of the luminance surface on the retina corresponding to a human body surface correspond to a hieararchical structure corresponding to a sequence of structural nodes in a tree. Each node correspond to an image structure type and the whole tree of all possible image structure correspond to a taxonomy. The transformation of a human body luminance surface from an undifferentiated surface to its full differentiated topography goes through a sequence of symmetry breaking events, each one leading to a more complex image structure up to the fully differentiated complex surface of the human body. So all the historical/formal setps of the evolution of the surface are implicitly stored in the luminance surface. The umpacking of this information requires an appropriated geometrical framework of analysis.

Louis,

Again, for some strange reason, you continue to ignore the original question about the "record keeping *in nature*", and continue to refer to the existing mathematical formalisms.

Lev,

In my way of seeing, what I am is not a representation, nothing is a representation. But the only method of knowing is to represent. When we represent we assign a cetain type of structure to things. Some formal structure are more appropriated than other but none of them correspond to reality itself. For a particular phenomenal domain we can debate which type of representation/structure is most appropriated.

Every existing entity has been formed along a process of formation. In order to understand an entity we have to understand how it came into being. So an appropriated representation of an entity will be one which make explicit the formation steps of the entity. A good representation of a biological entity will make explicit its process of formation. This is a very old idea that was discussed by Plato and Aristotle but which can now be given more formal mathematical expression.

Lev,

Sheldrake and others paraphrased a very romantic idea, that nothing what ever happened will be forgotten. May be it is stored in a cloud ... In reading this information we can find sens and feel comfortable in mother gayas fold. This is a form of ancient native religion with pseudo scientific claim.

On the other hand there are philosophers (Sartre, Camus, ...) who postulated the senseless world without any spiritual or metaphysical layer as result of the war disasters and the fail of naive religious belief. This is pure materialism.

The truth will be found in between these positions.

Louis,

word, formulas, images are shadows of a reality we never can see. But the shadows will become sharper in discussing about it and researching scientifically.

In connection with the original question, as is the case with many other fundamental question here at RG, it appears that there is a widespread misunderstanding of the issues it raises.

The term "object/process representation"---despite ts ambiguity---is the closest relevant one. In physics, processes and 'objects' are mainly represented by (numeric) vectors or functions. So first of all, we should agree that such representations do not exist in Nature. I know that many participants here do not (or cannot) respond unbiasedly to such issues, but let's try one more time. ;--)

Lev,

I have to agree that number and vector or any mathematical concept did not exist in Nature before we invented them but I tell you in advance that the same status of non existence I would attribute to any representation, whatever wonderfull and better is this representation.

If you are interested, I can explain why there are reasons to believe that the second half of your last statement may not be true.

Lev,

Yes I would be interested and always open to change my ideas.

The only chance of success in discovering the 'true' form of representation in Nature we have is if Nature herself relies on some form of representation in creating and maintaining the objects/processes that comprise what we call reality.

In our approach we assumed that the best bet is that of (structured) events, the prototypes / blueprints for all the events constituting 'reality'. Of course, we assumed that there are several types of basic events, form which all macro-events (and various levels of representation) are formed.

There are reasons to believe that if some form of representation is not used by Nature we would have seen much more random reality. In other words, trees, stars, galaxies, etc. would not form clearly delineated and relatively stable classes.

When we say that quantitative methods are of our invention and, therefore, they are not part of nature, we miss the point that we are also part of nature. So, in a way, nature has an accounting system implemented in our brains and maybe in other parts of our bodies and, why no? perhaps in other brains and organs of other animals here, on this planet and, maybe, in other places in this huge universe. I have been thinking of this question for weeks and I have to confess that I am still in confusion.

Oscar,

I think you are confusing two issues. To simplify, there are objects created directly by Nature (without our participation) and those created by humans, such as wheels, chairs, democracy, geometry, calculus, etc.

Because we produced the latter, we believe that we understand the form of their existence, which is not true. Of course the form of existence of all objects is most likely the same, but the question is : What is it? That is what being discussed.

Lev,

if I understand you, you would like to ask, what is matter, what is an electron, what is energy, what is time, what is space and so on.

If I am right, I have to say, that these questions are philosophical, metaphysical or even religious questions but not scientific ones. A physician never would ask: 'what is an elektron?', but which behaviour and which properties has an electron? - never 'what is ...'

The reason is very simple. We do not know and we never will do it really. It is like Gödel's incompleteness theorems in mathematics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems).

Wilfried,

Somehow, you like to confuse issues. ;--)

First, Gödel's incompleteness theorems have absolutely nothing to do with the issue.

Second, the original question was not "What is an electron, etc.?" It is about the form of "record keeping in nature" (if it exists).

However, of course, the answer to the original question does have bearing on the nature of electron, time, space, etc.

Lev,

The word representation by itself sudgest that a representation is an abstract object human have created and are using to represent Nature. Nature excluding the symbolic world human has created does not seem to use representations. We can only discuss Nature in terms of facts that are condensated and expressed within some representational language. We cannot escape the representation circle, all we can do is improving the representations but we are still within the circle.

In the biological world, record keeping embraces all kind of memories and at the most abstract level: everything in the biological world is a memory. Not an explicit form of memory, a kind of box into which you put representation, but implicit type of memory: an interactional structure inherited from past generations or past experiences.

Louis,

The most typical meaning of the term "representation" is something (r) created by humans that is supposed to stand for something real (object o): o --> r.

With the advent of computers, this meaning, especially in computer science, became concretized: object's representation is what stands for the 'real' object inside the computer.

Extending a bit that CS meaning, we can think of the representation of a concrete object in Nature as some informational (non-'physical') blueprint for that object. So the direction is reversed: from the representation to the object.

As I already mentioned, there are serious reasons to believe that to maintain the class-based organization in Nature, such object representation (informational blueprint) should exist.

Lev,

Are you thinking of a mapping between an object "o" and a representation of "o" that may or may not be a number? I ask because the "r"

o): o --> r

is not clear.

Your idea of a mapping from an object into something else is interesting. You may find it helpful to start with a set of objects X, and P(X), the set of all subsets of X and subsets A,B in P(X). Then a new mapping g can be written, namely,

g: P(X) x P(X) --> P(X) defined by g(A) = B.

So, for example, A could be a set of geese we see flying south for the winter and B could be those geese who land nearby, resting for a while before they continue their journey flying southward.

James,

Please note: the mapping o --> r is just for explanation of the meaning of "representation", but your mapping g simply obfuscates the issue of representation.

I don't think we should extend directly the human (artificial) understanding of "record keeping" to the Universe. The very interesting possibility is that not the DNA, tree rings, geological deposits, etc. are the true "records" but there exit some yet unknown to us event-based informational 'records', or representations.

By the way, we still don't know how to think about an 'event' in Nature, and science still does know how to model events. It's hard to imagine any record keeping in Nature without recording the corresponding events.

One form of record keeping invented by life is DNA. We do not fully understand how genetic record keeping work but it is clearly a form of record keeping.

@Lev Goldfarb

I don't think I am confusing anything regarding what we do. We are not gods or demigods. We are part of nature. Whatever we do is natural, a chair, a car, a book, whatever we do is natural; we can call it "man made" or "artificial" yes: that does not change the fact that we are a part of nature. I guess you remember, more or less, what you were doing ten years ago and if you were taking notes, you will trust your notes more than any tree rings or geological deposits.

Trough our minds and writing tools, the universe now has a record that 409 years ago (in Earth's proper time) a new star was visible from the surface of this planet. I don't know if there are eyes somewhere else in the universe watching that star at this moment. What is this moment by the way, when we talk about the entire universe? There, I admit, I am confused.

@Louis Brassard

That's very true. The number of bones in a human skeleton has remained constant for a very long time.