When I think of information as a non-conserved entity (unlike matter and energy in this respect), I usually jump too quickly to regrets about losses of information. Here I want to celebrate, more optimistically, the creation of information. Conservation (of matter or energy), of course, means that these entities can be neither created nor des-troyed – their total amount in the universe is constant. Since information is not conserved (except in eternity), it can unfortunately be destroyed, but it can also gloriously be created.

These processes of destruction and creation go on all the time, like the dance of Shiva. Destruction of informa-tion encompasses the loss of documents, accidental erasures of computer texts, memory loss, the burning down of the li-brary in Alexandria, and especially death and extinction. Creation of information includes the writing of scholarly books, novels, plays, poems, political manifestos, and constitutions; scientific research; musical composition and performance, dance choreography, creation of paintings and sculpture; building cathedrals, office towers, and cities; and giving birth to babies.

So how does the creation process work? How is informa-tion formed? What is happening when it is “in formation”, i.e. during the creative process? This, of course, differs in details as between writing, science, music, art etc.; but primarily, the common motif is the creation of patterns emerging from the void of “uncreation”.

There are patterns of meaning, as in language; patterns of knowledge, as in science; patterns of beauty, as in art; and patterns of life, as in babies. To sum up, these are patterns of values.

Patterns mean interconnections, linkage, communication; they network through nodes, weave webs, can sometimes knit one-dimensional yarns into two-dimensional fabrics. Patterns thrive on metaphors and similes, as well as generalizations, abstractions, and categorizations; but then they jump right back again from the abstract to the concrete, as in illust-rating the principles of psychology by writing a play or a novel – or an autobiography.

Patterns are strongly influenced by one’s culture and discipline, and yet should also strive to be trans-cultural and trans-disciplinary. Patterns should be at the same time analytical and synthetic, reductionist and holistic, in the complementary way so well illustrated by Hofstadter in “Escher, Godel, Bach”.

There are no rigid boundaries or even seams between physical and social sciences, between sciences and huma-nities, between scientific and historical methods, between visual arts and music, between prose and poetry, between science and art and religion. They all create meaning, truth, and beauty, in a glorious negation of entropy – ephemeral though it may be, in face of the reality of information loss.

Someone has said “We have no control over our birth and our death, so we must enjoy the interim.” We cannot in the long run prevent the loss of information, but we can create it and enjoy it and celebrate it in the interim.