In physics, information is often invoked as if it were a substance — a thing that can be stored, transmitted, even conserved. But what actually is information? And how does this concept shift when viewed through the lens of relational ontology?
If probability, as we’ve seen, is not ignorance but structured potential, then information cannot be the reduction of ignorance. Instead, it must be something far more dynamic: the construal of coherence within a field of potential.
1. The Classical View: Messages and States
In classical terms:
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Information is the reduction of uncertainty — a measure of how much we learn by observing a system,
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It is fundamentally statistical, defined over ensembles,
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It can be quantified in bits: a binary measure of how many distinctions we can make.
This gives rise to the metaphor of communication as message-passing: a sender transmits a code through a channel, which the receiver then decodes. But this model assumes that the message and the signal are already pre-structured — and that the meaning is encoded in the signal.
2. Quantum Turns: No Message Without Measurement
Quantum theory destabilises this view:
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There is no pre-existing state prior to measurement — the “message” isn’t waiting to be read,
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There is no copying of arbitrary quantum states (no-cloning theorem),
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Measurement doesn’t reveal information about the system; it participates in constructing what the system becomes.
Information here is no longer transmission. It is actualisation — the construal of coherence at the moment of the cut.
3. Relational Ontology: Information as Construal
From a relational stance, information is not what is contained in a system, but what is brought into coherence through a relation. Specifically:
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Information is not a quantity or an object,
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It is not reducible to bits or entropy,
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It is the construal of a coherent event from within a structured potential.
This means:
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There is no information independent of perspective,
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There is no information without a cut — a distinction drawn within the system,
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The act of construal is itself constitutive of the information.
4. Information Without Substrates
So what does a quantum system “carry,” if not information in the classical sense?
Nothing.
There is no substrate in which information resides — no particle or field that “contains” bits. Instead:
Information is how a relation becomes meaningful through coherence.
It is not a property of the quantum system. It is an expression of the event of actualisation that occurs when one potential coherence is drawn out from a field of alternatives.
5. No Observer, No Information
This also shifts the status of the observer. In classical physics, an observer may read information from a system without changing it. In quantum physics — and in relational ontology — this is impossible.
Observation is not passive. It is an act of construal. It draws a cut that configures the system’s becoming. And it is this cut — not some pre-existing fact — that constitutes information.
Information, then, is:
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Not in the world,
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Not about the world,
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But a way the world construes itself in relation.
Closing
So where classical views treat information as something that can be stored, transmitted, or lost, relational ontology insists:
Information is not a thing.It is an event of construal — an actualisation of coherence across a relational cut.
In this sense, there is no such thing as “the amount of information in a system.” There are only different ways a system may be construed to cohere.
In the next post, we’ll return to a longstanding question: if there is no external observer, no stored information, and no hidden variables — then what, exactly, is a quantum system?
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