“Physics gives rise to observer-participancy; observer-participancy gives rise to information; information gives rise to physics.” Wheeler called this subjective self-creation, “the participatory universe.
From an extensive meditation by Kevin Kelly, inspired by the theses of philosopher Bruce Mazlish.
Kevin Kelly on the first four discontinuities:
“Philosopher Bruce Mazlish claims that the eyes of science have overthrown humanity’s view of itself in a series of revelations. At each unveiling, we descend one notch. In the first removal, Copernicus dethroned our common-sense assumption that our world stood at the center of the universe. Astronomy eventually revealed, with a shock, that we were a minor tribe huddled on a small speck circling a nondescript star at the outer edge of an immense average galaxy floating among a trillion others in one small corner of the universe. The noble distinction between us and the rest of the universe was eliminated to reveal a continuous continuity of existence. Our perceived exceptionalism was demoted to the ordinary. Within the universe, we were not set apart, but dwelt in a continuum.
The second break from the exalted was launched by Darwin, who revealed that the exceptional discontinuity we perceived between ourselves and other animals or plants was equally illusionary. We are one continuous life, one evolution. Our position as humans is only one twig on a million-twigged tree, each terminal equally evolved. Within life we were not set apart, but dwelt in a continuum.
According to Mazlish the third discontinuity was located in our heads. Freud began the on-going process of overcoming the specialism we attribute to the idea of “I.” Psychology and neurology discovered that the “I” is a handy fantasy constructed to facilitate daily life, but that there is no central decider at home; rather there are many “i”s operating in our mind, and those parts are not distinguishable from our physical body, or even at times from other minds. Our own consciousness has been dethroned from central emperor to a field of cognitive tricks. Within sentience, we are not set apart, but dwell in a continuum.
We are now in the middle of dispatching the fourth discontinuity. The venerable distinction between machines and living creatures is receding so fast that it is becoming increasingly clear to everyone that a grand continuity connects the world of the made and the world of born. Nature and machine are two faces of the same extropic force. I’ve previously written a long argument in support of this continuity, and I assume its validity here on this blog. The question today is not so much whether the technium shares its roots with biological evolution, but whether it will displace its parent, or cohabit with it. Either way within the technium we, the living, are not set apart but dwell in a continuum.
But as the arc of evolution continues beyond these four continuums, what future smoothings can we expect?”
The fifth discontinuity
“I propose that the next exceptionalism to be broken by science, the fifth discontinuity so to speak, is the special status we give to the physical. We feel the universe to be a place full of physical material that pushes back and presses against us. Things have weight, size, and duration. That’s what the universe is in everyday experience — the real stuff that can be really measured, felt, and sensed. Our world of matter and energy follow a set of laws to such an exacting degree that we can manipulate it to make rockets and computers. Matter’s consistent refusal to be bullied outside its own laws adds to the sense of it being “real.” Real means physical.
Information, on the other hand, lacks physicality. Unlike energy, which we can at least measure with physical instruments, a digital bit is disembodied. It weighs nothing. It takes up no space. It flows as mysteriously as a gremlin. We don’t have good measures for information. (If I make an exact copy of your song, am I increasing the amount of information in the world, or decreasing it because I am adding nothing new?) We are not yet sure if the total amount of information in the universe is conserved, nor if it is finite. Yet, we have come to see that life, even our own life, is a pattern of intangible information, rather than material form. Evolution – that great engine of creation — is a pattern of information. And mind, especially the mind, is a type of information flow. So we know that the most powerful forces in the universe (that we are aware of) are constructed of the most intangible things we can detect: bits.
There stands the discontinuity: atoms vs bits. But lately, physicists have begun to suspect that atoms are composed of information in some way we don’t understand. As legendary physicist John Wheeler puts it, “its are bits.” The deeper we inspect the interior of sub atomic particles and their quirky behavior, the more they can be explained as information flows. Many physicists expect that when we get to the bottom of how matter works that we’ll find primarily a structure of information and the absence of anything “material.” Atoms will be understood as elaborate, dynamic arrangements of intangible signals. In an article published by the American Journal of Physics, entitled “What is quantum mechanics trying to tell us” solid-state-physicist David Mermin writes “matter acts, but there are no actors behind the actions; the verbs are verbing all by themselves without a need to introduce nouns. Actions act upon other actions. [There’s] no duality between the existence of a thing and its properties: properties are all there is. Indeed: there are no things.”
As this discontinuity between the realm of the physical and the realm of the immaterial is erased, scientists have began to re-envision the laws of physics as complex algorithms of code. Energy also, is being restated in terms of information. The pulsating stars and iron planets will gradually be seen by science as wisps of intangible nothings. Organisms and technologies, including mega structures such as skyscrapers, starships, and floating cites, will be defined as structures of computation, equivalent to software. Eventually the boundary between the tangible and intangible will be completely permeable, and the special status we assign to our physicality will be seen (again) as only one station on a long continuum. Within the realm of the real, we, the physical, are not set apart, but dwell in a continuum.”
The hypothesis of the sixth continum
Kevin Kelly then also posits a sixth continuum, and we won’t reproduce the details of his argument, available in the original.
However, it can be summarized as follows:
“Another boundary that is already being challenged is the unique place we give to the past, to causation, and to objectivity.”
But the chain of challenges to current orthodoxies, do have an important participatory tone to it.
Kelly cites the astrophysicist Wheeler:
“Wheeler observed: “Physics gives rise to observer-participancy; observer-participancy gives rise to information; information gives rise to physics.” Wheeler called this subjective self-creation, “the participatory universe.”
The text then discusses the network effects of the increased integration of knowledge, a topic we will discuss separately.