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If the physical world we know is made of matter stretched in time and space and some forces affecting it, what would be an Idea, pure Information or something similar.

Does those things don't exist in a physical model or did I just miss something.

If yes where to arrange it into the physical model? Is an idea just matter without time and Space?

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This is a philosophical question, not a physics question. Maybe there's also a Philosophy Stack Exchange? – Eric Zaslow Nov 12 '10 at 16:15
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At least there is a philosophy-tag in physics… – dStulle Nov 12 '10 at 16:34
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I don't think that tag should be there. As far as I'm concerned, any question tagged [philosophy] deserves serious consideration for being closed. – David Zaslavsky♦ Nov 12 '10 at 17:38
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@wrongusername: if we're going to discuss information, let's do it using the established field of information theory, and other related fields like statistical mechanics. Information theory doesn't deal with "ideas". It has strict technical definitions of what "information" means, how you calculate it, and what you can do with it. None of that seems to be involved in this question, which is part of why I say it's not a physics question. – David Zaslavsky♦ Nov 12 '10 at 18:41
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@Gerard: i don't think you understood the question: it's not asking how ideas play along in Physics, but rather what they are "made" of. – Daniel Nov 13 '10 at 0:26
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closed as off topic by David Zaslavsky♦, Mark Eichenlaub, j.c., mbq♦, Sklivvz♦ Nov 13 '10 at 10:28

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2 Answers

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An "idea" is something that happens in the confines of your mind: two particles colliding don't have ideas, they simply behave following the so-called "Laws of Physics", and so on.

In this sense, an idea, or, more generally, creativity itself, is something that only "exists" (if that's an appropriate term in this case) in your "mind", in this "emergent phenomena" driven by the inner working of your brain.

In this sense, i'd classify this question as a "neuroscience" one... ;-)

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Besides an "idea in your mind" you could have an idea--the same idea, even--written on paper, or stored on a hard drive. So the same idea can have a whole bunch of utterly different physical manifestations. – coneslayer Nov 12 '10 at 16:55
So information, or knowledge is something that is only in our mind, but can be transferred with physical means to other minds. So information is some kind of order that can be either perceived through senses or just be "there". But what is it? – dStulle Nov 12 '10 at 17:03
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You may be interested in "information theory" which concerns encoding and communicating information; measures of the information content are, as you say, a kind of measure of order, or lack thereof. One starting point: cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notabene/information-theory.html – coneslayer Nov 12 '10 at 17:06
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Our minds are also physical. Information is always physical. See information theory, entropy. – nibot Nov 12 '10 at 17:08
Information it self is not physical but can have a physical representation. – dStulle Nov 12 '10 at 18:08
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Information must always be represented by the state of some physical system. The idea in your head exists somewhere within the biological structures and electrochemical state of your brain, just as information in the computer is represented by the presence or absence of electric charge in the billions of bits of RAM.

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