Sreenath,
Hi. This was a good essay, and I liked how you discussed the view of information from three different perspectives, physics, math and biology. A couple of minor comments are:
1. In the conclusion where you mention:
Although Information & Reality (Bit & It) have physical origin, without mind they are in themselves
empty and blind. Bit comes from It, but mind can know of It only through Bit.
my view is that the mind is contained within and made of the brain. That is, all the "abstract" abstracts in our minds are actually composed of neuronal interconnections, ion gradients between neurons, etc. I can't rule out the possibility of a mind separate from the brain, but until someone can show me where it is and provide evidence for it, I'll go with the brain. So, in a way, even the information/bits in the mind are made of its.
2. I think it's theoretically possible to describe all of life in terms of physics, but it would require almost infinite amounts of time, complexity and computing power. So, for all practical purposes, the emergent properties of biology are much better explained in terms of biological properties than physical properties.
3. I agree with you that the human mind can eventually grasp everything about reality. It may not be able to prove everything because humans can't step outside reality but it can grasp everything. But, in millions of years when we can grasp everything, eventually there will be nothing left to grasp, and the growth of the human mind may plateau. This kind of flat growth at first, then exponential growth, then plateauing growth is very similar to the growth curve of microorganisms.
4. You're right about prebiotic evolution, but back then, there wasn't even DNA and RNA, there were just some molecules that could use the other molecules in the environment to make additional copies of themselves. Eventually, this became more complex, got enclosed in lipids (for a membrane) to become a cell, and on and on.
5. The study of information flow from the outside of an organism (cell, tissue, organism) to the inside is usually called signal transduction at least in the case of cells, and there are lots of studies being done on analyzing this not only biochemically but with information and signal processing theory. Also, even separate from cells, biomolecules like proteins can also respond to information such as the pH of a solution by changing their shape, and this is really a type of information sensing, too.
Anyways, very interesting essay! Thanks!
Roger