Materialism tells us that matter precedes thought. Everything there is to know about the universe is expressed through material conditions, and our knowledge comes from our individual and collective encounters with matter. Idealism says consciousness is the origin of material phenomena. Materialism posits that for those ideas to take form, one must first experience the material world.

Does matter really precede thought?

Take a chair for example. An idealist would point to the physical object as the manifestation of the idea of a chair. A materialist would argue that the source of that idea is the material need for a chair, resulting from our experience of reality. One does not just think of a chair – one thinks of it because one can only stand for so long, thanks to gravity. It is a chicken-or-the-egg scenario, as is much of philosophy.

That these inescapable guardrails even exist points to the possibility of an information-based reality. This is the code behind the material facade of physical existence…

Wheeler’s view: The laws of physics come from nature’s code

Then came along John Archibald Wheeler, who argued that it (any perception of material reality) comes from bit (the human interpretation of information). All things physical trace their roots from an information-theoretic origin (Thomas, 2015). To Wheeler, at the bottom of the universe is information, not matter (“It from bit,” 2023). This goes against the underpinnings of materialism but does not quite agree with the tenets of idealism, as no singular consciousness can be credited for how the universe works, save for speculative discussions of an intelligent designer. Instead, Wheeler sees information as the origin of reality. There is no particular source of said information. It is just there for us to make sense of and construct our realities with.

While materialism intuitively explains the genesis of reality, filtered through – and limited by – human perception, it still cannot explain why the universe is governed by different laws. The speed of light. The square-cube law (Giant insects? Even physics knows better). The laws of thermodynamics. That these inescapable guardrails even exist points to the possibility of an information-based reality. This is the code behind the material facade of physical existence, much like the source code of an app. This information is embedded within reality itself. We don’t know who put it there or why, but we cannot break out of it.

Our experience with gravity not only limits but also dictates how we conceptualize the chair. If there were no gravity, a chair would be a useless idea. There would be no need to sit in the first place.

References

It from bit: What did John Archibald Wheeler get right-and wrong?. Mind Matters. (2023, May 18). https://mindmatters.ai/2021/05/it-from-bit-what-did-john-archibald-wheeler-get-right-and-wrong/

Thomas, R. (2015, December 18). It from bit?. Plus Maths. https://plus.maths.org/content/it-bit