Can Information Concepts Have Physical Content?

Abstract

Abstract In this paper I analyze the physical content of the main information concepts in the history of physics of the last seven decades. I argue that this physical character should be evaluated not by appealing to analytical-linguistic confusion (Timpson 2013) or to the usefulness of its applicability (Lombardi et al. 2016a), but properly from its capacity to allow us to acquire significant knowledge about the physical world. After systematically employing this epistemic criterion of physical significance I will conclude by rejecting the main strategies of ontological inflation and physical content of the main information concepts in the classical thermal physics literature.