Thanks to the Renaissance and the subsequent evolution of Modern Science, our current understanding of the world we live in is much broader and deeper than in Medieval and Classical times. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the progress of Science was accelerated to a vertigo-inducing rate of novelty. During that era, at least three significant paradigm adjustments occurred, and gave birth to new branches of scientific investigation. Darwin's Theory of Evolution gave all future sciences a rational foundation for explaining the natural, but mysterious processes of change over deep time. Then Freud's radical rethinking of how the human mind works, opened a long-closed door to understanding the mysterious subconscious operations behind our conscious thoughts and feelings. Next, Einstein's deeper penetration into the quirky quantum nature behind normal Newtonian Physics resulted in a paradoxical new way of looking at the Cosmos and the Microcosm. We now know that the world is constantly evolving, that the mind is mostly subconscious, and that the universe is much bigger and smaller and stranger than anyone ever imagined.
This new thesis builds on all of those older concepts, but also attempts to incorporate some of the more recent discoveries about the structure of Reality. At the essential core of each of these new branches of Science we find information. Claude Shannon's pragmatic Theory of Informationprobably facilitated the emergence of what we now call the Information Age. Other cutting-edge theories are less connected with personal names, but they are also pushing the boundaries of our ability to understand and control the complexities of Nature. Some of those new departures are Complexity Theory, Chaos Theory, Systems Theory, Cybernetic Theory, Memetic Theory, and Quantum Mechanics. Based on my superficial understanding of these abstruse fields, I have concluded that the single, fundamental substance of the universe is not atoms, or quarks, or energy, but Information. That “arrogant” leap of logic may be an unsubstantiated speculation, but I'm putting it out there for discussion, to see if it has any merit. The Enformationism Thesis is set forth, as much as possible in layman’s language, in the following pages and links. Where technical terms, or coinages, or special meanings are used, they are defined in the Terminology section, and highlighted where first encountered.
E n d o f B a c k g r o u n d
INFORMATION SCIENCES
What I refer to as "21st century sciences" are those that go beyond strict empirical materialism to deal with conceptual relationships between material things. I also call them the "Information Sciences" : Information Theory, Systems Theory, Chaos and Complexity Theory, Cybernetics, Memetics, and so forth. All of those pragmatic sciences are forced to deal with paradoxical, abstract concepts, relationships, and processes that go beyond the self-imposed boundaries of 19th century Materialism. [The difference is similar to Euclidean vs Non-linear Geometry vs multi-dimensional Topology] That's why I must remind science purists that it was intrepid Science which inadvertently strayed into the formerly forbidden domain of Metaphysics and Philosophy.
REAL MEANING
"Instead I imagine meaning and physical reality as the same thing. . . . what consciousness is made of is understood to be the same as what physical reality is made of. . . . The physical world . . . it is meaning".
—-- Gevn Giorbran
Everything Forever
SPOOKY STUFF
Because information is not a thing of this world. It is immaterial ---after all, anything you can give away and still have must be something magical and ineffable, right? . . . the equating of ideas with information. . . "mental states are invisible and weightless . . . The content of a belief lives in a different realm from the facts of the world."
