The widespread interest this book has found among professors, scientists
and stu- dents working in a variety of fields has made a new edition
necessary. I have used this opportunity to add three new chapters on
recent developments. One of the most fascinating fields of modern
science is cognitive science which has become a meet- ing place of many
disciplines ranging from mathematics over physics and computer science
to psychology. Here, one of the important links between these fields is
the concept of information which, however, appears in various disguises,
be it as Shan- non information or as semantic information (or as
something still different). So far, meaning seemed to be exorcised from
Shannon information, whereas meaning plays a central role in semantic
(or as it is sometimes called "pragmatic") information. In the new
chapter 13 it will be shown, however, that there is an important
interplay between Shannon and semantic information and that, in
particular, the latter plays a decisive role in the fixation of Shannon
information and, in cognitive processes, al- lows a drastic reduction of
that information. A second, equally fascinating and rapidly developing
field for mathematicians, computer scientists and physicists is quantum
information and quantum computa- tion. The inclusion of these topics is
a must for any modern treatise dealing with in- formation. It becomes
more and more evident that the abstract concept of informa- tion is
inseparably tied up with its realizations in the physical world.
