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INFORMATION: n. "knowledge obtained from investigation, study, or instruction"

Information derives from the Latin informare, “to give form to the mind, to discipline, to instruct.” The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) offers the earliest written record of that sense in a passage from 1387 but adds that the definition is now “rare” or “obsolete.” Still, a word generally carries some measure of the force of its etymology. The second definition in the OED illustrates that point: “the action of telling a fact or being told something.” What we are told by a person or by recorded media forms our thinking, opinions, and perspectives.

For those who study the origin of life, information, specifically the information carried in DNA, is central. According to Dr. Stephen Meyer, “The salient feature of life is the presence of digital information in DNA.  . . . Information always comes from an intelligent source.” Even evolutionists who deny that idea cannot dismiss the information encoded into DNA.

Information & the Question of Intelligence

According to the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, we can determine from the informational properties of natural objects whether they bear the type of information that arises from an intelligent cause. “The form of information that is produced by intelligent action, and thus reliably indicates design, is generally called ‘specified complexity’ or ‘complex and specified information.’” The information in DNA forms more than opinions and perspectives. It forms the material body itself—the brain and, perhaps, the mind. Further, and more importantly, the information encoded in DNA implies an author.

All information implies an intelligent source, yet merely human sources may be questionable. In recent years, information regarding every current event, from the pandemic to federal elections, has sparked controversy—even rage. To some, the political credo of the provider of the information becomes a litmus test for its reliability; if the information fails to support his views, he is likely to label the source unintelligent—a curiously unintelligent response in itself.

Just as the information encoded in DNA makes replication of a species possible, the information recorded in books makes possible the replicating of a culture. As the integrity of DNA affects the future of a species, the integrity of cultural information affects successive generations building on that information. Obviously, integrity is maintained by preservation, not destruction. Transmission of cultural information has until recently rested with families, the church, and schools. Now schools at every level claim an exclusive right to that mission, but when it comes to the information borne through the ages of the West’s development into a global civilization, they more often engage in selective denial or targeted cancellation.

In the science fiction classic A Canticle for Leibowitz (see p. 48), men and women enraged after a global war rise up in violent protest against the information that led to the creation of nuclear weapons. Their protests turn into book burnings, and they execute anyone who has mastered the information contained in those books. Like these violent protestors, called “simpletons” in the novel, today’s “woke” seek to erase the past, to uproot Western civilization, and to cancel those who champion it. Rather than recognize the heritage of the West as the DNA of our culture, they seek to “re-engineer” the arts and literature to prevent its replication.

The Book of Proverbs asks, “How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?” (1:22). Along with the simpletons, the woke might answer, “Until all forming information of the past is expunged.”