INFERRING REPRESENTATION TYPE FROM THE FRACTAL DIMENSION OF BIOLOGICAL COMMUNICATION WAVE-FORMS

Digital representation is based on an arbitrary relation between physi cal signal structure and assigned meanings; analog representation uses a proportionality between changes in meaning and changes in the physi cal structure of the signal that represents the meaning. For recursive information, the physical structure of the analog signal will also be recursive. Since a digital signal will be physically arbitrary for bo th recursive and non-recursive information, a measure of physical recu rsion can provide an index for analog/ digital differences. A simple m odel for this relation is examined by computational experiment for spe ctral density, and by analytic expression for Kolmogorov complexity. I t is examined by empirical measure of fractal dimension for samples of a capella music, poetry, and prose, in a comparison of rap vs. reggae music, and for cetacean vocalizations. Generalizations of this analys is for other communication systems are discussed.