Philosophy of Information in Chinese Style

摘要

No doubt, information is the keyword of our time since we even call our age the Information Age. Thus, it is natural that information becomes one of the hottest themes in present academics. The Information Age is not only an age for the West, but also for the East, as the study of information is a global one. Wu Kun, a professor of philosophy of information and philosophy of science and technology in Xi'an Jiaotong University, China, has established a complete unique theoretical system of philosophy of information through his persistent endeavor in the past 30 years. This is a review of Professor Wu Kun's representative original work, Philosophy of Information: Theory, System, Method (published in Chinese by The Commercial Press, China, 2005). Since it is a product of a Chinese style of philosophy of science and technology, known as dialectics of nature, I will not just describe the structure and content of the book, but also introduce its academic background. With the introduction of this special background, I think it will be easier for Western scholars to understand his unique system of philosophy of information. Then I will briefly describe the structure of the book and make some comments on it. Because of the importance of the definition of information in Wu's philosophy, my review will give priority to his definition of information.