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Constructor theory expresses physical laws in terms of the physical transformations or changes which the laws make possible. By allowing the existence of counterfactuals, statements about transformations which may prove false, it is also able to describe information in terms of known physical laws. The foundational element in the theory is the ''constructor'', an entity which can cause some change while retaining the ability to cause it again. Examples of constructors include a heat engine (a thermodynamic constructor), a catalyst (a chemical constructor) or a computer program controlling an automated factory (an information constructor). The theory was developed by physicists David Deutsch and Chiara Marletto. It draws together ideas from diverse areas including thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, information theory and quantum computation. Quantum mechanics and all other physical theories are claimed to be ''subsidiary'' theories and quantum information a special case of ''superinformation''. Chiara Marletto's Constructor theory of life build on constructor theory to "show that self-reproduction (evolution ) is compatible with no-design laws of physics, in particular with quantum theory" ==Motivations== Current theories of physics based on quantum mechanics do not adequately explain why some transformations between states of being are possible and some are not. For example a drop of dye can dissolve in water but thermodynamics shows that the reverse transformation, of the dye clumping back together, is not possible. We do not know at a quantum level why this should be so. Constructor theory provides an explanatory framework built on the transformations themselves, rather than the components.〔 Information has the property that a given statement might have said something else, and one of these alternatives would not be true. It is said to be "counterfactual". Conventional physical theories do not model such counterfactuals. However the link between information and such physical ideas as the entropy in a thermodynamic system is so strong that they are sometimes identified. For example the area of a black hole's event horizon is a measure both of the hole's entropy and of the information it contains. Constructor theory is an attempt to bridge this gap, providing a physical model which can express counterfactuals, thus allowing the laws of information and computation to be seen as laws of physics.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Constructor theory」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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