Emotions as forms of consciousness

In the physico-chemical, the biological, and the conceptual realms, energy processes (understood as work or heat transfers) are thermodynamically both conservative and generative. We observe a conservation of form and process and an entropic heterogeneity of form and process. The result of this hierarchical interaction is information. By information, the author understands matter or energy that is capable of work; it permits energy to do things to other things. This means that energy as information operates within relations. The continuous expansion of information is evolution, where “the whole universe is approaching in the infinitely distant future a state having a general character different from that toward which we look back in the infinitely distant past”. It is an axiom of this paper that, as Peirce (1935-38) pointed out, “everywhere the main fact is growth and increasing complexity” and “the variety of the universe is forever increasing”. How does this evolution of information process take place? The methods of explanation have ranged from the vitalistic intentions of the gods to the accidental mechanisms of mutation. Are these the only two answers?