Abstract
There is an age-old question as to whether geometry (form) or matter (energy) is more fundamental in the universe – the “ground of being”. The current debate – the subject of this contest - is cast in terms of information and quantum mechanics. Wheeler’s position, following Wiener, can be summarized by the following statements: 1) information is not energy; and 2) information and not energy is fundamental. A related view is that the universe operates like a digital computer, and the emergence of Its as things from Bits as immaterial digital information is the only acceptable cosmogony. In his 2011 essay “Bit-from-It”, Julian Barbour, contra Wheeler, argued in favor of the primacy of energy as things - Its, but that nature is fundamentally discontinuous and digital and continuity an illusion. However, as an either-or dichotomy, the contest question may be badly posed, excluding a possible interactive alternative, It-and¬-Bit. I first present my views of three major possible positions: • It-from-Bit: refers to an interpretation of some limited experimental data and computational hypotheses about the way the universe operates. • Bit-from-It: suggests that energy is primitive but the dynamics of the emergence of complex information is not specified. • It-and-Bit: energy and information emerge from, or are different aspects of, an as yet undefined primordial substrate more fundamental than either. In my synthesis of these positions, at some level of reality, energy is more fundamental than information, and information emerges from but is always functionally associated with it. In the macroscopic world, energy and information, as well as continuity and discontinuity, are non-separable partners.
JOSEPH E BRENNER