In this post, I highlight the way thinking about physical reality from an 'information perspective' gives us a bridge between biology and physics. Why, you might ask, and the answer is that many physicists who are willing to think deeply about life (as a phenomenon) find it very puzzling indeed because it seems to defy some very basic principles. I might be wrong, but I currently believe that the information perspective allows us to see what is the essential difference between a living system and one that is not. The answer lies in the accumulation of information, its protection from being either affected by or affecting (as formal cause) physical forces ... that is, until it is required. The explanation I build up in Farnsworth (2022) "How an information perspective helps overcome the challenge of biology to physics" (Biosystems 104683) manages to make downward causation, irreducible hierarchies, circular causation and autopoiesis all compatible with normal physics - there is no need for a special 'life' law.
