(2017-09-28, 02:59 PM)stephenw Wrote: [ -> ]Speaking just for myself, the paradigm shift to a scientific method-based discovery of an immaterial "kind" has been taking place for 100 years or more. It started with Boltzmann and his formula for entropy. Shannon's Mathematical Theory of Communication unleashed the practical side of command and control of formal information in transmission channels. And the genius of John Von Neumann and Norbert Wiener established the ideas of cybernetics and computer computation for the future. The Age of Information is old news and today it shapes life and humanity's future.
It is the cultural shadow of materialistic fundamentalism that doesn't transform our knowledge of information into a science equal to physics! "Information is neither matter nor energy............." (N. Wiener)
From Wikipedia:
A paradigm shift, a concept identified by the American physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn (1922–1996), is a fundamental change in the basic concepts and experimental practices of a scientific discipline.
Some of the "classical cases" of Kuhnian paradigm shifts in science are:
1543 – The transition in cosmology from a Ptolemaic cosmology to a Copernican one.[8]
1543 – The acceptance of the work of Andreas Vesalius, whose work De humani corporis fabrica corrected the numerous errors in the previously-held system created by Galen.[9]
1687 – The transition in mechanics from Aristotelian mechanics to classical mechanics.[10]
1783 – The acceptance of Lavoisier's theory of chemical reactions and combustion in place of phlogiston theory, known as the chemical revolution.[11][12]
The transition in optics from geometrical optics to physical optics with Augustin-Jean Fresnel's wave theory.[13]
1826 – The discovery of hyperbolic geometry.[14]
1859 – The revolution in evolution from goal-directed change to Charles Darwin's natural selection.[15]
1880 - The germ theory of disease began overtaking Galen's miasma theory.
1905 – The development of quantum mechanics, which replaced classical mechanics at microscopic scales.[16]
1905 – The transition from the luminiferous aether present in space to electromagnetic radiation in spacetime.[17]
1919 – The transition between the worldview of Newtonian gravity and the Einsteinian General Relativity.
I don't think the information and cybernetic revolution you describe is of the magnitude of these shifts, especially the change from Aristotleian to classical mechanics and the Darwinism revolution in biology. Shannon, Von Neumann and Wiener's insights and work were brilliant, but were well accepted within the materialistic paradigm, and accordingly embraced not only by science, but also by engineering disciplines in the development of computer and communications systems. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that information theory was firmly grounded in existing physics and did not even remotely challenge the materialist view of the nature of reality and of man as purely an intelligent animal.