Eric Hedin writes:
The famous American physicist John Wheeler did not shy away from seeking to understand the most fundamental aspects of our universe. Wheeler coined the aphorism “It from bit” to describe his conviction, born of the many discoveries in particle physics and cosmology in the twentieth century, that information (characterized by the computer storage term “bit”) preceded and produced everything else (“it”). He elaborated:
Otherwise put, every it—every particle, every field of force, even the spacetime continuum itself—derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely—even if in some contexts indirectly—from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes or no questions, binary choices, bits.
It from Bit symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom—at a very deep bottom, in most instances—an immaterial source and explanation; that what we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin.1
Thus, in Wheeler’s conception, information precedes and transcends matter, energy, time, and space.
We also know, as philosopher of science Stephen Meyer has emphasized, that in every case where we are able to trace information back to a source, we arrive at an intelligent agent—a poet or computer programmer or composer or architect.2 When we couple the “It from Bit” insight with this observation regarding our uniform experience with information creation, we are led toward a conclusion that strongly echoes a core claim of theistic religion such as we find in the Hebrew scriptures announcing that nature “pours forth speech” and is the result of a divine mind’s spoken words “in the beginning”3—or, as one of the New Testament authors put it, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” and “all things were made through him.”4
Quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger, in reviewing Wheeler’s contributions to quantum phenomena, notes this same connection between the discoveries of modern physics and what he terms “old knowledge.” Zeilinger states:
In conclusion it may very well be said that information is the irreducible kernel from which everything else flows. Then the question why nature appears quantized is simply a consequence of the fact that information itself is quantized by necessity. It might even be fair to observe that the concept that information is fundamental is very old knowledge of humanity, witness for example the beginning of gospel according to John: ‘In the beginning was the Word.’5
[1] John A. Wheeler, “Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links”, in W. Zurek, Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information (Redwood City, California: Addison-Wesley, 1990).
[2] John Archibald Wheeler, A Journey into Gravity and Spacetime (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1990). John Archibald Wheeler, “Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links,” in Feynman and Computing, edited by Anthony J. G. Hey (Boca Raton, FL; Taylor and Francis Group LLC, 2002), 109.
[3] Stephen C. Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 394-395.
[4] Psalm 19, Genesis 1.
[5] John 1:1, 3a.
Excerpted from Canceled Science (ch. 12), by Eric Hedin.