In quantum theory, the term information is everywhere — from the entropy of black holes to the no-cloning theorem and the foundations of quantum computing. Yet information is often ambiguously defined, sometimes treated as if it were a substance that moves, copies, or disappears.
In a relational ontology, information is not a thing, nor a quantity inherent in particles or fields. Rather, it is a measure of constraint — an index of what is possible within a relational configuration and how potential becomes actualised through selection.
1. Classical and Quantum Views of Information
-
Classically, information is reduction of uncertainty about the state of a system — typically encoded in bits,
-
Quantum theory introduces richer structures: qubits, entanglement entropy, contextuality, and non-commutativity,
-
But even here, information is often reified — treated as an ontological primitive, sometimes even more fundamental than matter.
2. The Relational Reframing
-
Information is not substance but structure: a way of characterising the constraints that shape what is possible in a given field,
-
It emerges only when a cut is made in potential — when a configuration is selected within a space of affordance,
-
There is no “information in the system” waiting to be extracted; there is only relational coherence actualised under constraint.
3. Implications for Quantum Theory
-
The quantum state (wavefunction) does not contain information — it describes potential coherence awaiting resolution,
-
Measurement does not retrieve information, but constitutes it by selecting from within a shared relational field,
-
Entanglement does not represent “shared information” between particles, but joint constraint on how actualisation may occur.
4. Information Loss and Conservation Revisited
-
The “black hole information paradox” — whether information is lost in evaporation — presupposes that information is a thing to be preserved or destroyed,
-
From a relational view, nothing is lost: the coherence of the system may be redistributed, but the structure of constraint remains,
-
The question is not where the information goes, but how the relational topology is transformed.
Closing
In this view, information is not a hidden property or flowing essence. It is a relational trace of constraint, a reflection of how potential has been resolved under specific systemic conditions.
This reframing invites us to rethink the informational language of quantum theory — not as a new ontology of bits, but as a formal language for describing actualisation within relational possibility.
In our next post, we will explore how this relational understanding of information helps clarify the foundations of quantum computation and entanglement.
No comments:
Post a Comment