Information and energy in biological hierarchical systems

We propose a substantive, admittedly restricted, notion of information that pertains to explaining biological evolution by satisfying the following criteria: the information must (1) have material basis, so it can be stored; (2) be amenable to copying (replicating); (3) be interpretable in the economic context of energy and matter flow (i.e., capable of eliciting a discriminating outcome when used); and (4) be distributed across levels of the genealogical hierarchy. Energy, or the capacity of a physical system to perform work, is a principal causal agent in evolution because the fluctuations in the flow of energy and matter through the entities in the economic hierarchy are causally responsible for the survival and differential propagation of the entities in the genealogical hierarchy of replicators, thus channeling or disrupting the flow of information that shapes the historical pattern of life.