Information’s Awakening: From Medieval Logos to Wheeler’s Quantum Bits 

In 1989, John Archibald Wheeler (1911-2008) – one of the most influential American theoretical physicists and the man Stephen Hawking called “the hero of the black hole story” – delivered a paper at a Tokyo physics symposium that would fundamentally challenge our understanding of reality. Already renowned for his work with Niels Bohr on nuclear fission and for coining terms like “black hole” and “quantum foam,” Wheeler now proposed something even more radical: that the physical universe emerges from information. 

The paper, “Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links,” reads like an intellectual detective story. Wheeler suggested that at the smallest scales, space and time themselves dissolve into a granular foam of binary choices. Everything we consider real – particles, fields, forces, even the smooth fabric of spacetime – emerges from this deeper informational bedrock. A photon isn’t really a “thing” until we measure it; the measurement itself, the act of asking nature a yes-no question, brings it into existence (https://philpapers.org/archive/WHEIPQ.pdf). 

Just as a novel’s reality springs from the arrangement of letters on a page, our physical world, Wheeler argued, arises from the interplay of binary yes-no questions and answers – what he memorably termed “it from bit.” 

The implications are dizzying. If Wheeler is right, then the universe isn’t like a giant machine ticking away according to predetermined laws. Instead, it’s more like a vast computational process, a cosmic game of twenty questions where reality emerges through the accumulation of billions upon billions of binary choices. Observer and observed, questioner and questioned, become inextricably linked in this participatory universe. 

The paper is structured around three questions (“How come existence?”), four prohibitions (“No space, no time”), and five tantalizing clues. Like a detective story where the mystery is existence itself, Wheeler leads us through the evidence with both scientific rigor and philosophical daring. His vision unifies quantum mechanics, information theory, and fundamental physics into a cohesive picture that still challenges and inspires physicists today. 

The Pattern Before Matter: Wheeler’s Quantum Echo of Aquinas 

However, this insight wasn’t entirely new. Seven centuries earlier, medieval thinkers had conceived of the universe as fundamentally informational. Thomas Aquinas developed a sophisticated framework understanding reality as emerging from divine patterns or “rationes” – what we might today call information structures. In his vision, the divine Word (Logos) wasn’t merely a theological concept but represented the fundamental architecture of reality itself (https://isidore.co/aquinas/english/John1.htm). 

Both frameworks – Wheeler’s physics and Aquinas’s metaphysics – converge on a universe where pattern precedes matter, where information is fundamental, and where physical reality emerges from an immaterial foundation. Wheeler expressed this through his famous phrase “it from bit,” suggesting that everything physical (“it”) derives from responses to yes-or-no questions (“bits”). In Aquinas’s framework, physical things emerge from and participate in eternal patterns that exist in the divine intellect. 

This historical resonance adds depth to Wheeler’s insights. The intuition that information underlies physical reality isn’t new – it’s been part of sophisticated philosophical frameworks for centuries. Wheeler’s genius lay in translating this ancient insight into the language of modern physics and providing experimental frameworks to test it, drawing on his deep understanding of quantum mechanics and general relativity. 

Reality’s Hidden Code: From Divine Forms to Quantum Information 

Wheeler’s radical proposition that “every it – every particle, every field of force, even the spacetime continuum itself” derives from binary yes-no choices finds a surprising parallel in Aquinas’s understanding of how the Word contains the archetypal forms of all created things. For Aquinas, the Word is not simply divine speech but the perfect expression of divine wisdom, containing within itself the patterns or “rationes” from which physical reality emerges. Just as Wheeler saw bits as the fundamental building blocks of physical reality, Aquinas saw these divine patterns as the source from which all material existence springs forth. 

This convergence becomes particularly striking when we consider Wheeler’s emphasis on observer participation. For Wheeler, reality emerges through the acts of observer-participants who pose questions to nature and register responses. This remarkably mirrors Aquinas’s insight that creation is not a static given but a dynamic participation in divine wisdom. Both thinkers see reality as fundamentally participatory rather than mechanistic. 

The practical implications of this convergence are profound for modern technology. When we build quantum computers, we are essentially working with Wheeler’s bits at their most fundamental level. But Aquinas’s framework helps us understand why this works – because reality itself has an inherently information-theoretic structure. The medieval insight that patterns precede and give rise to physical reality helps explain why mathematical symmetries so often predict physical discoveries. 

Aquinas’s understanding of how patterns give rise to physical existence helps explain why information-theoretic approaches to physics have been so successful. 

Perhaps most profoundly, this synthesis suggests new approaches to consciousness and free will. If reality emerges from observer-participation, as Wheeler proposed, and if this participation reflects a deeper pattern-based structure of reality, as Aquinas analyzed, then consciousness may be fundamental rather than emergent. Free will might be understood as our participation in the information-theoretic structure of reality rather than as an anomaly to be explained away. 

Robert Nogacki

Robert Nogacki – licensed legal counsel (radca prawny, WA-9026), Founder of Kancelaria Prawna Skarbiec.

There are lawyers who practice law. And there are those who deal with problems for which the law has no ready answer. For over twenty years, Kancelaria Skarbiec has worked at the intersection of tax law, corporate structures, and the deeply human reluctance to give the state more than the state is owed. We advise entrepreneurs from over a dozen countries – from those on the Forbes list to those whose bank account was just seized by the tax authority and who do not know what to do tomorrow morning.

One of the most frequently cited experts on tax law in Polish media – he writes for Rzeczpospolita, Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, and Parkiet not because it looks good on a résumé, but because certain things cannot be explained in a court filing and someone needs to say them out loud. Author of AI Decoding Satoshi Nakamoto: Artificial Intelligence on the Trail of Bitcoin’s Creator. Co-author of the award-winning book Bezpieczeństwo współczesnej firmy (Security of a Modern Company).

Kancelaria Skarbiec holds top positions in the tax law firm rankings of Dziennik Gazeta Prawna. Four-time winner of the European Medal, recipient of the title International Tax Planning Law Firm of the Year in Poland.

He specializes in tax disputes with fiscal authorities, international tax planning, crypto-asset regulation, and asset protection. Since 2006, he has led the WGI case – one of the longest-running criminal proceedings in the history of the Polish financial market – because there are things you do not leave half-done, even if they take two decades. He believes the law is too serious to be treated only seriously – and that the best legal advice is the kind that ensures the client never has to stand before a court.