Consider the parallelism between Gabor’s Theory of Communication and human  understanding of, for example, sediment deposition and/or climate change..

Gabor’s theory of communications augments a purely tangible (‘real’) time sequence of information elements into a ‘complex’ (‘real’ + ‘imaginary’) information signal.  Gabor developed this ‘quantum physics compliant’ communications theory based on Pauli’s formulation of the ‘uncertainty principle’; i.e. wherein ‘time’ and ‘frequency’ are understood to be interrelated.

Gabor compares this to augmenting a ‘rotating vector’ with a ‘rotating field’ (which is 90 degrees phase shifted from the rotation of the vector).  Tied up in this arguably more comprehensive ‘communications theory’ are the modes of understanding associated with ‘observation’, ‘experiencing’, ‘perception’ and a quality of observation that is termed in German ‘anschaulichkeit’§ (‘intuitively real’ or true to nature).

Imagine the rotating pinwheel appearance of a ‘hurricane’.   (more…)