The natural numbers as a universal library

Jesús Mosterín

pp. 305-317

in: Evandro Agazzi, György Darvas (eds), Philosophy of mathematics today, Berlin, Springer, 1997

Abstract

We would like to be able to measure the complexity (or quantity, or form, or structure) of any finite symbolic objects, such as chromosomes, texts, pictures and pieces of music. How much form does such an object have, how complex is it? We would like our measure to be uniform, so as to allow us to compare the complexity of heterogeneous objects, like genes, photos and songs.