This book explores the unity of life. It proposes that the concept of
information is the inner essence of what we today call life.
The importance of information for our species is obvious. Human beings
are highly dependent on information, constantly exchanging with
conspecifics. In a less apparent way, we are the product of genetic and
epigenetic information which determines our development in a given
environment from a fertilized egg to the adult stage. Even less apparent
is that information plays a determining role in ecosystems. This
observation may include the prebiotic systems in which life emerged.
Our claim is that Nature processes information continuously. This means
that even beyond living entities, we can see messages and decoding
procedures. Nature can be said to send messages to its own future and
then to decode them. Nature "talks" to itself! The systematic
organization of messages suggests that, in some respects, we should even
speak of the "languages" of Nature.