Information, Intelligence and Beyond
 

Ron Cottam, Willy Ranson & Roger Vounckx

Abstract
 

In spite of the extensive use of terms such as data, information, understanding, intelligence and wisdom, there is until now no unified structured description of ‘systemic’ operation within which each of these expressions finds a natural differentiated home. A major reason for this is that traditional science has actively excluded life from its brief, by insisting that inter-scalar phenomena must be describable in a formal manner.

In this paper we illustrate the evolution ‘from the bottom up’ of a hyperscalar natural hierarchy which may be used to represent equally well both the inanimate/inplantate and living aspects of our surroundings. A natural hierarchy consists not only of an assembly of multiple ‘similar’ scales (e.g. a set of Newtonian models), but also a parallel hierarchy of their scalar complements (e.g. a set of quantum-mechanical models). Each of these acts as a scalar ecosystem for the other, ensuring that there is always a correlation between the description of an entity and its environment.

We conclude that a single scale in the absence of its scalar ecosystem may be characterized as data, and that information has the added attribute of a context, requiring similarly scaled formulations of both hierarchical assemblies.

Understanding implies not only a scalar description, but also an awareness of the relationships of that scale to both its higher- and lower-scaled neighbors: an entity is both composed of components, and has a higher-level relevance or meaning.

Intelligence is better described as a capability, and as such it resides not at a specific scale or even at multiple scales, but in the recursive inter-scalar communication which leads to overall correlation of the multi-scalar assembly into a unified ‘system’.

Recursive correlation across the entire scalar assembly generates a new kind of unification which is hyperscalar in nature. This too can exhibit multiple ‘scales’ in extended processing networks, where each ‘scale’ is a different degree of description of the overall correlation. Wisdom, or sapience, resides in the recursive inter-hyperscalar communication which leads to overall correlation of the multi-hyperscalar assembly.

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