I Physics of Information Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links John Archibald Wheeler Information from Quantum Measurements Benjamin Schumacher Local Accessibility of Quantum States William K. Wootters The Entropy of Black Holes V. F. Mukhanov Some Simple Consequences of the Loss of Information in a Spacetime with a Horizon Shin Takagi Why is the Physical World so Comprehensible? P. C. W. Davies II Laws of Physics and Laws of Computation Algorithmic Information Content, Church-Turing Thesis, Physical Entropy, and Maxwell’s Demon (...) W. E. Zurek Entropy and Information: How Much Information is Needed to Assign a Probability? Carlton M. Caves Complexity of Models J. Rissanen Laws and Boundary Conditions C. H. Woo How to Define Complexity in Physics, and Why Charles H. Bennett III Complexity and Evolution Requirements for Evolvability in Complex Systems: Orderly Dynamics and Frozen Components Stuart A. Kauffman Valuable Information Seth Lloyd Non-Equilibrium Polymers, Entropy, and Algorithmic Information Dilip K. Kondepudi The Dynamics of Complex Computational Systems Tad Hogg Computation at the Onset of Chaos James P. Crutchfield and Karl Young IV Physics of Computation Parallel Quantum Computation Norman Margolus Information Processing at the Molecular Level: Possible Realizations and Physical Constraints W. G. Teich and G. Mahler How Cheap Can Mechanics’ First Principles Be? Tommaso Toffoli Intermittent Fluctuations and Complexity Xiao-Jing Wang Information Processing in Visual Perception A. Zee V Probability, Entropy, and Quantum Thermodynamic Constraints on Quantum Axioms Asker Peres Entropy and Quantum Mechanics M. Hossein Páriovi Einstein Completion of Quantum Mechanics Made Falsifiable O. E. Rossler Quantum Mechanics and Algorithmic Complexity J. W. Barrett Probability in Quantum Theory E. T. Jaynes Quantum Measurements and Entropy H. D. Zeh VI Quantum Theory and Measurement Quantum Mechanics in the Light of Quantum Cosmology Murray Gell-Mann and James B. Hartle Information Dissipation in Quantum Cosmology and the Emergence of Classical Spacetime Jonathan J. Halliwell The Quantum Mechanics of Self-Measurement David Z. Albert The Quantum-Classical Correspondence in Light of Classi- cal Bell’s and Quantum Tsirelson’s Inequalities X. A. Khalfin Some Progress in Measurement Theory: The Logical Inter- pretation of Quantum Mechanics Roland Omnes. (shrink)

A multifactorial and growing crisis of health care systems in the developed world has affected medicine. In order to provide rational responses, some central concepts of the past, such as the definitions of health and disease, need to be updated. For this purpose physicians should initiate a new debate. As a point of departure the following definitions are proposed: Health is a dynamic state of wellbeing characterized by a physical, mental and social potential, which satisfies the demands of a life (...) commensurate with age, culture, and personal responsibility. If the potential is insufficient to satisfy these demands the state is disease. This term includes sickness, illness, ill health, and malady. The described potential is divided into a biologically given and a personally acquired partial potential. Their proportions vary throughout the life cycle. The proposed definitions render it empirically possible to diagnose persons as healthy or diseased and to apportion some of the responsibility for their state of health to individuals themselves. Treatment strategies should always consider three therapeutic routes: improvements of the biologically given and of the personally acquired partial potentials and adaptations of the demands of life. These consequences favourably contrast with those resulting from the WHO-definition of health. (shrink)

We are never illness or disease, but, rather, always their sum in the world of day-to-day experience. Disease and illness are not closed systems, but mutually constitutive and continuously interacting worlds. In the patient’s case it is always experience as well. Pain, sickness and death help make that particular experienced identity unavoidable, and at some level ultimately inaccessible to medicine’s changing understanding of disease and tools for managing it. Health—rather than cost containment, specific conditions, or technologies—should be the central focus (...) for health care and health-care reform. A compelling reason to focus on health comes from the observation that the prevalence of disease over the .. (shrink)