The dematerialization of matter goes too far

Richard Feynman once remarked, when asked which physical statement contains the most information in the least words: “I am convinced that this would be the atomic hypothesis (…), which says that all things are made of atoms. That material things consist of atoms and that these consist of further particles is today part of the canon of the naturalistic understanding of the world. Now, of course, a strange epistemological uncertainty relation is increasingly noticeable in this naturalism. The deeper the understanding of matter, the more the concept of matter evaporates.

Our ordinary understanding of matter is based on a kind of Lego model. If we build a structure from Lego bricks, the total mass is the sum of the Lego brick masses. But this linear model suffers shipwreck when applied to micro-objects. Let’s consider a piece of sugar (monosaccharose) of one gram mass. It consists of over 1021 “Lego bricks” or molecules. They are composed of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen atoms, these are made up of electrons, protons, and neutrons, and the protons and neutrons are each made up of three quarks. The main part of the sugar lump mass comes from the protons and neutrons. But the quark mass is about one percent of the mass of protons or neutrons. So where do the remaining 99 percent come from?

An elegant yet irritating solution

Since Einstein’s special theory of relativity, physics has had a patent answer to this: the equivalence of mass and energy, captured in the iconic formula: E = mc2. Therefore, the remaining mass can be considered a manifestation of the interaction energy of quarks (and the particles of their interaction, the so-called gluons). An elegant physical solution to the problem and an irritating one at the same time: the lump of sugar consists mainly of localized energy.

The answer is irritating because it immediately provokes the question: Energy from what? There is no answer to this question: Energy of the sugar lump. Because that would make us turn in a tautological circle. We learned in physics class that a mass “has” energy, potential energy when we lift it into an elevated position, for example; or the kinetic energy when we throw it. Quantum theory reverses precisely this saying when it says that mass “is” energy, namely energy of an underlying “something” that fills space, is changeable in time, and only appears as a localized particle under special conditions. This something is the quantum field — a hybrid of relativity and quantum theory — probably the most bizarre entity in the history of physics.

Fields instead of particles

The history of the field term already begins with Isaac Newton. He established a mathematical theory of gravitation based on a single simple law. It describes the strength of the attraction between two masses, over any distance. The tricky thing for Newton was that he found a mathematical description of something whose nature seemed deeply mysterious — ultimately absurd — to him.

Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell experienced the same thing two centuries later with electromagnetism. Faraday introduced force field lines as an illustrative tool for understanding the interaction between charges, and Maxwell formulated a set of equations for the dynamics of these field lines — a jewel of mathematical physics. It can be used to calculate the whole range of electromagnetic phenomena. But as with Newton, the question arose: What is electromagnetism?

Theoretical physicists tend to regard their abstractions as reality

Physicists after Maxwell sought to answer them with the vocabulary of classical physics, in the language of a material substrate, the ether. They did not succeed, the ether turned out to be a phantom. This was very confusing. Because the electromagnetic field is something real, we can prove it indirectly by its effect on charged bodies; or by the fact that we receive messages via radio or cell phone.

And again, the question arises: Fair enough, but what is this “something” that underlies everything? The physicists did not have a satisfactory answer to this question. They said in their embarrassment: Well, electromagnetism is what the Maxwell equations describe.

This is how modern physics conceives matter. Ontologically, it puts the field first and not the particle. Or rather: fields and particles are identical. Particles, including their properties such as mass, charge, or spin, are manifestations of fields, the fundamental substrate of matter — ultimately a mathematically describable je-ne-sais-quoi.

The cryptically ingenious formula “It from Bit”

All things consist of atoms. In this sentence, Feynman writes, “with a little imagination and thought, you will discover a lot of information about the world”. John Archibald Wheeler, Feynman’s thesis supervisor, had a lot of imagination and took this statement literally. For him, information is not only a means to discover the world, but the information also creates the world in the first place. Wheeler coined the cryptically brilliant formula “It from Bit”: Something from the information.

What does this mean? Wheeler was inspired by a well-known parlor game, the “Twenty Questions”. One player, the questioner, leaves the room and the remaining participants, the answerers, agree on a term, for example, “raven”. The questioner has the opportunity to deduce the term from the yes-or-no answers of the other players. He has 20 questions available, such as “Is it alive?”, “Does it fly?” and so on.

Wheeler now came up with a variation of this game, the point of which is that the answerers do not agree on a term at all, but rather coordinate their answers with the previous questions and answers. They just must not be contradictory. From a maximum of 20 bits, the players can construct a term by continuing to ask questions, which is not yet clear at the beginning. From the binary questions — the bits — the definitive answer — the It.

This corresponds quite exactly to the situation in quantum theory. Its central theoretical element is the state or wave function. It describes the spectrum of possible values of observable quantities — such as position, energy, spin. According to an interpretation that is widely accepted today, the Copenhagen Interpretation, the state function contains the complete information — the bits — about the quantum system in question: the It.

Quantum theoretically, such an It only exists in an unambiguous state after the measurement — i.e. after interaction with an apparatus — just as in the Wheeler variant of the 20-question game, the term is only established at the end. Classically, we say: There is a thing (a particle or an object) in a certain state — an It — and we measure certain quantities on it: First comes reality, then information. A bit from It.

Why should the unraveling of matter lie in an incredibly long chain of bits?

In quantum theory, it is the other way round. Here we say: We measure certain quantities and conclude that there is a particle in a certain state. So first comes information, then reality. It from a bit.

In the words of Wheeler: “Every particle, every force field, even the continuum of space-time derives its function and meaning, actually its entire existence, from the answers that the apparatus gives to yes-or-no questions: binary decisions, bits. A point of light on the screen, an electric pulse, a click in the detector: these are the answers of the apparatus, the bits, which therefore represent the informational atoms of reality. After all, they are the basis on which we reconstruct the presumed core of things.

Does reality float on immaterial information?

Does this mean that physical reality floats on the most fundamental level in the form of the existence of immaterial information? Not at all. It primarily means that theoretical physicists tend to consider their abstractions to be a reality. It is quite true that physicists do not “observe” electrons or photons, but read certain data from apparatuses. And undoubtedly such data — for example dots on a screen — can be interpreted as bits. But bits without Its — without any material carriers — are nothing. There are only bits-plus-its.

If we interpret the dots on the screen as the “last” immaterial information atoms, we do the math without the whole material world of the experimental arrangement involved in the creation of the dots. Whoever claims “It from Bit” would therefore first have to explain the causal potential of the immaterial information to create something material.

This line of thought could be pursued further into the transcendental, namely if one assumes that questions presuppose a questioner, i.e. a consciousness. The apparatus itself does not ask questions, without observation there is no reality. Thus, at the beginning of the questioning, of observation, there should already be “something” there that has consciousness. Spirit as the origin of matter? Here the formula “It from Bit” boils down to something that sounds almost like the gospel of John: In the beginning, was the bit. And the bit was with God.

The bifurcation in natural philosophical thinking

The history of modern physics is a history of the dematerialization of matter. It began with a momentous bifurcation in 17th-century natural philosophical thought. The first modern theorists of matter — Galileo, Newton, Locke, Boyle — distinguished between primary and secondary properties of bodies, i.e. between quantifiable and “merely” qualitative properties related to the senses.

Science could only deal with primary properties because they alone are the real, the “intrinsic” characteristics of matter. Thus the history of the modern matter was predestined as the history of the mathematical “spiritualization” of matter; after all, as a human being, one can grasp only the qualitative properties with the senses, not the quantitative ones.

Nowadays, the interested layman regularly encounters this “spiritualization” when he wants to be informed about the latest state of knowledge. He reads about strange entities such as strings and p-brands, about 26-dimensional spaces, and Calabi-Yau-manifolds with exotic topologies, even about “It from Qubit”, which drives Wheeler’s thought even further. Dizziness seizes him: What else has this got to do with the matter we know from dealing with everyday things?

Is reality so detached from what we humans find logical? Do we not understand something very fundamental here? In any case, it is noticeable that the theorists have “purified” the concept of matter from its physical-sensual reference to such an extent that they now apparently believe they can find the foundations of the universe in the most abstract heights of any “ultimate” theory.

But why should the unraveling of matter lie in a handful of mathematical equations or an incredibly long chain of bits? This could turn out to be a mistaken belief that would then probably germinate in the idea of the atom: Just as we finally come across the indivisible after all sharing, so do we come across a final answer after all questions? Perhaps nature will cheat us at this point. Perhaps there is no one answer at the heart of everything, but always just one more question.