information runs the world

I know I'm on a daily blogging roll - and it can't continue indefinitely. But today was rather interesting: despite being on holiday, I went to visit a colleague in one of Sydney's universities.

We fell to discussing some of the foundational theories of our discipline.  He reminded me of a perspective I've heard of but not studied: namely that the theory of information (best associated with Claude Shannon) is regarded by some as a better grand theory of the universe than particle physics.  A bit of googling tells me that this line of thought is known as digital physics (intrestingly, that wikipedia page doesn't, as I write, mention Shannon: proof that wikipedia is ever deficient).

Why is this of interest here?   Simply because this line of discussion led my interlocutor to invoke an information-theoretic notion of God.  As a young computer scientist, although I hed long recognised the hand of God in the beauty of mathematics, I never would have thought that my discipline would have anything of interest to say about theism.  It's all rather exciting.

There are two reasons not to go into details here.  One is that I don't understand them all.  The other is that I don't think that any of you, dear regular readers, are information scientists.  I'd be happy to continue the line of thought further, and clearly have some more reading to do.  The idea is not unrelated to something raised by John Lennox, which I mentioned when I reviewed his book: "an appeal to information theory and the Church-Turing thesis, to show that the initial creation of life itself necessarily breaks everything we know about computability." [Wow.  I don't think I've ever quoted myself before :) ].


This mathematical corner of philosophy is close to my heart.  I wouldn't want to over-claim, but the very notion that deep questions of metaphysics can arise in my professional life is rather exciting. That's all.