Tom Stonier (1927–1999)

If Shannon gave us the measure of information, Tom Stonier gave us its soul.

Stonier was a British biologist and information theorist who took a radically different path from Shannon. Where Shannon deliberately avoided questions of meaning, Stonier dove straight into the deep end. He asked: What is information, really? Not just how do we measure it, but what is its place in the universe?

His answer, laid out in books like “Information and the Internal Structure of the Universe” (1990), was nothing short of revolutionary. Stonier argued that information is not a human invention, not an abstraction, but a fundamental property of the universe. As real as matter and energy. It exists whether anyone is there to interpret it or not. A book on a shelf contains information even when unread. A DNA molecule carries instructions whether or not we’ve decoded them.

This may sound like common sense now. But at the time it was radical. Stonier was pushing against the prevailing view that information was merely a statistical phenomenon (Shannon’s view) or a human construct. He insisted that information has its own “dynamics” and “laws,” that it can act as a causal agent in the world.

Here’s what moves me about Stonier. He wasn’t afraid to be wrong. He was a biologist writing about physics and philosophy, venturing onto turf where specialists could (and did) dismiss him. But he asked the big questions anyway. He understood that sometimes the disciplinary gatekeepers are wrong, and the visionary outsiders are onto something real.

I came to Stonier late in life, and reading his books felt like finding a missing piece of a mystery I didn’t even know I was looking for. His work gave me permission to think of information not just as data, but as the organizing principle behind everything from stars to cells to consciousness. My own concept of “infogenesis” owes a tremendous debt to his vision.

Stonier wasn’t as famous as Shannon during his lifetime. He is somewhat hard to categorize. But for those who find him, he’s a revelation.

Essential reading: “Information and the Internal Structure of the Universe” (1990). It’s out of print but worth hunting down. Start with the first chapter, where he simply declares: “Information exists.” I was hooked from that line.