Given the infinite divisibility of matter, ought we conclude that the fundamental stuff of reality is mere information? That is, if we were to keep splitting matter into smaller and smaller bits, what else could possibly be down there besides abstract concepts and math? In a recent article in Scientific American, Bernardo Kastrup discusses Max Tegmark’s theory that, “Only the mathematical apparatus used to describe the behavior of matter is supposedly real, not matter itself.”
We have long since reached the point at which every probing analysis of anything fundamental—whether the origin of the cosmos, the basis of matter, and many other things—almost instantly devolves into an uncomfortable confrontation with infinity and/or nothingness. Divide matter infinitely, you end up with nothing. Peer into a black hole, you get infinite density. Ponder the time before the big bang, you run straight up against infinite nothingness. The size of the void beyond the edge of our universe? The number of other universes? There’s no getting around it. And for better or worse, logic and math come completely unglued when they are forced to deal with either one.
Tegmark’s idea that information is at the core of reality is a simple acknowledgement that, once matter is split down into the smallest pieces we can fathom, all we’re left with are energy and fields. And those things, if thing is even the right word for them, are more like concepts than objects. Our descriptions of energy and fields are completely exhausted by the math. There’s nothing else there. Ergo, reality is math and information at its core.
My book, The Substance of Spacetime, discusses a different possibility, one that deals head-on with the infinite nothingness at the origin of everything. Read the Introduction here.