the idea that information is even more fundamental to the nature of the universe than matter and energy
Many regard matter and energy as the fundamental components of nature. It’s beginning to look like information is even more fundamental to the universe. Werner Heisenberg, a pioneer in quantum mechanics and Nobel laureate, concluded that “elementary particles themselves are not real, they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts.”1Werner Heisenberg, Nobel laureate in Physics “Fundamental things like matter and energy which physicists insist are ‘real’ are made up of particles that are more or less probability distributions. The things we call ‘real’ are made up entirely of things that cannot be regarded as real.”2Niels Bohr, Nobel laureate in Physics Space-time appears to be a matrix of these computable units.
We might truthfully say that a person is a collection molecules governed by chemical reactions. But that’s not all a person is. A human consists of organs made of tissue. Tissue is made of cells with organelles that consist of biomolecular complexes assembled from biopolymers, proteins, and other macromolecules. Of course, these are made of atoms which in turn are made of quantum particles called hadrons. Hadrons consist of two or more quarks. Quarks come in several flavors (up, down, strange, charm, bottom, and top). Their behavior is quite strange from a purely physical understanding. In essence, these elementary particles are more or less bits of information. We can truthfully say that a person is a collection molecules governed by chemical reactions. But that’s not all a person is. Fundamentally, information involves both form and content. It always comes in an intelligible form; e.g. 1s & 0s, alphanumeric symbols, a modulated waveform, DNA, a narrative, or even the physical universe itself. Information also always contains content. Random scratches on a sheet of paper is not information. But when these marks are ordered a particular way taking on the form of letters, words, and sentences it suddenly contains a message. The message is its content. Within and information construct, form and content are inseparable.
Science increasingly supports something akin to the old idea of Platonistic idealism, which suggests that reality consists of ideas and that the ‘sensible world’, i.e. what we would call the natural or physical world, is merely derivative. This troubled Einstein immensely. Late in life, unable to reconcile quantum mechanics with his own theory of general relativity, Einstein confessed, “I was unable to find an explanation for the atomistic character of nature. One must find a way to avoid space-time continuum altogether.”3Albert Einstein, 1954 Einstein came to reject his own deterministic view of reality saying, “The distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” 4Albert Einstein, 1955 letter to Besso Family[/mfn
Like Einstein, our thinking is conditioned towards materialism in which matter gives rise to mind. But what if consciousness is the pre-condition of material existence? Consider the individual pixels that make up a single frame in a video. Each element is no closer to, nor further from, the digital processor in space or time. The video plays sequentially, but its digital contents exist independent of space and time and are accessible to the CPU all at once. In a recorded video, things are fixed. The ending never changes because it was predetermined. But in, say, a computer game where conscious beings interact within a virtual construct, outcomes are not fixed. In other words, outcomes are not deterministic as Einstein’s relativity would suggest. Nor are they completely random as quantum theory might suggest. Information science tells us that objects are computable, but it’s beginning to look like the emergent combinatorics of the universe, particularly consciousness, are not computable.
The universe looks more and more like the virtual construct we find on our computer desktop than the physical space our senses tell us is a actual desktop. Consider the big bang as initialization from a zero state much like code booting up. Fundamental particles emerge, i.e. information packets. Considering that matter is quantized we can think of the universe as essentially pixelated. This fundamentally discrete universe is seemingly a matrix of computable units. It has even been suggested that the equations describing supersymetry found in nature actually appear to contain some kind of binary error correcting code. 4S. James Gates Jr., Symbols of Power in Physics World It’s all possible thanks to syntax, distilled down into strings of ones and zeros. The fundamental substrate of the universe, information, points to a conscious mind. Something the ancients knew, but the moderns forgot. “We do not encounter the material substrate of things, but only the intelligible forms of things, situated within an interdependent universe of intelligible forms, everywhere governed by purposes” 5David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God
I often wonder whether God speaks today. This information-theoretic framework suggests that as long as the stars continue to hang in the sky, information is flowing. Most theorists aren’t so bold as to attribute this information stream to the mind of God. But this is, more or less, what they are describing. God is not merely Creator, but also Sustainer. It seems as though God’s words, His streams of consciousness, not only give us life, but sustain all aspects of existence.
Some have suggested that the three-dimensional space in which we exist is merely a projection of a higher order reality into the familiar three dimensions much the way our shadow projects onto the ground in two dimensions. This projection from higher order reality into three dimensional space would provide highly efficient data compression and encoding. It is as if we are living in a virtual, or partial, reality. We walk about in the Shadowlands that C.S. Lewis described6C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle, able to perceive only a faction of what is actually there. Perhaps we’re living in the land of shadows. Real life hasn’t begin yet.
If we’re honest, the materialist world view is faith-based. Naturalism is is a philosophy, not a fact.
If one wishes to view the physical universe as the ultimate reality— whether one imagines it as having no beginning or as having a beginning without cause — then one must also accept that it is still an entirely contingent reality, one which somehow just happens to be there: an “absolute contingency,” to use an unavoidable oxymoron.7David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God
Contrary to what the New Atheists would like us to believe, physics certainly hasn’t ruled God out.
The moment one ascribes to mathematical functions and laws a rational and ontological power to create, one is talking no longer about nature (in the naturalist sense) at all, but about a metaphysical force capable of generating the physical out of the intellectual: an ideal reality transcendent of and yet able to produce all the material properties of the cosmos, a realm of pure paradigms that is also a creative actuality, an eternal reality that is at once the rational structure of the universe and the power giving it existence. In short, one is talking about the mind of God.8David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God
The great physicists of the 20th century are not exactly lining up to endorse Biblical creation. But in wrestling with stubborn facts like the duality of waves and particles, quantum entanglement and non-locality they are indeed endorsing an ancient Platonistic idealism consistent with the information-theoretic Abrahamic tradition which in its essence can be stated, “We exist in the mind of God. Things exist because God sees them. We see them because they exist.” This is essentially an information-theoretic view of reality in line with contemporary theories on the nature of the universe.
If we accept that information is more fundamental than matter, this opens the door to the transcendent. Information implies an intellect. Value, meaning, and purpose become every bit as real as the physical universe. One way of looking at God is as the author of the universe. ‘Programmer’ may even be more appropriate. Space-time increasingly appears more like a data construct. John Wheeler, the great theoretical physicist, suggested that “All things physical are information-theoretic in origin.”9John Wheeler, “Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links It turns out energy is emitted in discrete packets. These quanta are effectively bits of information. We find that the quantum state of one particle may depend on the state of another physically distinct particle. They simultaneously influence one another despite having no physical interaction. This forces us to reject, albeit begrudgingly, the principle of local realism. You see, classical physics can describe the behavior of a single particle, but not multiple entangled particles. Quantum entanglement and non-locality suggest that space-time is something of an illusion. Consider the words of Max Planck, Nobel Prize winning physicist who described energy quanta, “There is no ‘matter’ as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force… We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter.”10Max Planck, 1944 speech in Florence, Italy on The Nature of Matter It’s beginning to look like reality is a virtual construct in which consciousness is even more fundamental than matter. Matter increasing seems to be derivative.This all gives credence to the increasingly popular simulation hypothesis which begs a series of questions posed by Jamin Hübner:
« Back to Glossary IndexWhy, then, are we here? Who is the “architect” or “programmer,” and does this entity or person or whatever communicate with those inside the simulation? Has the Maker been revealed so that we might gain knowledge? And is there the possibility of a “new simulation” after this one in which we might take part? As you can already tell, these questions are the bread and butter of classic divinity. If only those outside the believing community might see this.11Jamin Hübner, Have You Heard the Good News About the Simulation Hypothesis?