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This website is a place to explore the meaning and ramifications of a new philosophical and scientific hypothesis that I have chosen to call Enformationism. The term spelled with an "I" had already been used elsewhere in various contexts and meanings, so I looked for an alternative name. Since the new scientific term Enformy was already in use, with a meaning similar to what I had in mind, I simply chose to change the spelling of my proposed coinage.

This informal thesis does not present any new scientific evidence, or novel philosophical analysis. It merely suggests a new perspective on an old enigma : what is reality? The so-called “Information Age” that began in the 20th century, has now come of age in the 21st century. So I have turned to the cutting-edge Information Sciences in an attempt to formulate my own personal answer to the perennial puzzles of Ontology, the science of Existence.

I am neither a scientist, nor a philosopher, so the arguments herein carry no more authority or expertise than those of anyone else with an interest in such impractical musings. This is intended to be an open-ended thread, because it’s a relatively new and unproven concept, and because the ideas presented here are merely a superficial snapshot of what promises to be a whole new way of understanding the world : philosophically, scientifically, and religiously.

Since many of these ideas were first expressed in the form of short essays and forum posts, some of the contents of this site are simply re-posts from a variety of other un-related contexts. And yet inter-relationship is a key theme of Enformationism, so I will try to tie these disparate discussions together with links to related items here and elsewhere.

---gnomon

What is Information?

The Latin root “informare” meant to give recognizable (meaningful, significant) shape to something. In that sense a sculptor “in-forms” a blank slab of marble with a physical shape to represent a pre-existing image in his mind. In other words, a mental image somehow “causes” physical raw material to take on a shape that, in turn, “causes” cognition in another mind. Another way to put it is to say that “Information Creates Meaning”. Hence it is an integral component of Sentience, Consciousness, and Cognition. It is the raw material of Reason, the essence of Knowledge, and the structure of Mind. The ancient Greeks referred to the whole spectrum of information as “Logos”—often translated as “Word”, but more specifically the conscious motive behind an act of speech: Intention.

Scientists and Philosophers are always on the lookout for significant patterns in Nature from which they can extract specific meanings. Those extracted pieces of meaning are then labeled generically as information. But how that “information” came to be encoded in the material of nature is not often questioned by scientists. That’s not considered to be a practical project, so it’s left to impractical amateur philosophers to speculate on the origins of information: e.g. which came first, the informer or the information---the sculptor or the sculpture?

Refer to the Terminology pages for the definition of Information as it is used and intended in the Enformationism Thesis.

Background music :

Bach’s Goldberg Variations

performed on guitar by

Andreas Almqvist

Underneath it all, our universe may be entirely shaped by information.

—- Charles Seife

Decoding the niverse

Welcome to the enformation highway!

Wikipedia

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest historical meaning of the word information in English was the act of informing, or giving form or shape to the mind, as in education, instruction, or training.

The English word was apparently derived by adding the common "noun of action" ending "-ation" [Hence, En-Form-Action]