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Recently, Kleidon suggested to analyze Gaia as a non-equilibrium thermodynamic system that continuously moves away from equilibrium, driven by maximum entropy production which materializes in hierarchically coupled mechanisms of energetic flows via dissipation and physical work. I relate this view with Kauffman's 'Fourth Law of Thermodynamics', which I interprete as a proposition about the accumulation of information in evolutionary processes. The concept of physical work is expanded to including work directed at the capacity to work: I offer a twofold specification of Kauffman's concept of an 'autonomous agent', one as a 'self-referential heat engine', and the other in terms of physiosemeiosis, which is a naturalized application of Peirce's theory of signs. The conjunction of these three theoretical sources, Maximum Entropy, Kauffman's Fourth Law, and physiosemeiosis, shows that the Kleidon restatement of the Gaia hypothesis is equivalent to the proposition that the biosphere is generating, processing and storing information, thus directly treating information as a physical phenomenon. There is a fundamental ontological continuity between the biological processes and the human economy, as both are seen as information processing and entropy producing systems. Knowledge and energy are not substitutes, with energy and information being two aspects of the same underlying physical process.

Many problems in evolutionary theory are cast in dyadic terms, such as the polar oppositions of organism and environment. We argue that a triadic conceptual structure offers an alternative perspective under which the information generating role of evolution as a physical process can be analyzed, and propose a new diagrammatic approach. Peirce's natural philosophy was deeply influenced by his reception of both Darwin's theory and thermodynamics. Thus, we elaborate on a new synthesis which puts together his theory of signs and modern Maximum Entropy approaches to evolution. Following recent contributions to the naturalization of Peircean semiosis, we show that triadic structures involve the conjunction of three different kinds of causality, efficient, formal and final. We apply this on Ulanowicz's analysis of autocatalytic cycles as primordial patterns of life. This paves the way for a semiotic view of thermodynamics which is built on the idea that Peircean interpretants are systems of physical inference devices evolving under natural selection. In this view, the principles of Maximum Entropy, Maximum Power, and Maximum Entropy Production work together to drive the emergence of information carrying structures, which at the same time maximize information capacity as well as the gradients of energy flows, such that ultimately, contrary to Schroedinger's seminal contribution, the evolutionary process is seen to be a physical expression of the Second Law., Comment: 43 pages, 12 figures