COMPUTATION BY NATURAL SYSTEMS DEFINED

An explicit measure of the computation performed by gen-eral systems (electronic circuits, neurons, mechanical de-vices, etc.) is defined. We propose that the deeper nature of computation, and thus of any measure of computation, is in its reduction of complexity. The latter we understand as the ”obstruction against prediction”, experienced by an ob-server. We demonstrate the applicability and usefulness of this concept in different examples, which include some of the most studied families of dynamical systems. The mea-sure can also be computed for higher-dimensional and ex-perimental systems. 1