Our Failed Search for a Foundation

We can start, rather arbitrarily, with Aristotle and Democritus.  The way to come to an understanding of the world, they reasoned, is to tear it down and examine its individual constituent pieces.  Isn't it obvious?  They did not purport to "discover the atom."  Rather, the search for fundamental constituent pieces had to end somewhere, and, wherever that turned out to be, they would call the pieces "atoms," definitionally.  We can visualize the constituent pieces, even now, as perfect (and perfectly opaque) ball bearings.

This worked for a while, until we figured out that our "atoms" were not atomic, but rather made up of protons, neutrons and electrons, in configurations that we visualized as mini solar systems.

This worked for a while, until we figured out that there were myriad other particles, and also that matter could be converted to energy by splitting atoms.  Matter and energy are interchangeable.

Then came the quantum revolution, which convinced us that particles are not entirely particle-like; rather, they behave like waves in many respects.  Also, unlike ball bearings, particles do not occupy any particular place unless and until they are "observed" or "measured."  Observed or measured by what or whom?  That's hard to say.  If it is by a conscious observer, then that places consciousness at the center of things, which can't be right, because it sounds quasi-religious, and religion is the enemy of science.  So we've invented a new cosmology that posits that the particle is in every place that it could possibly be.  The "measurement effect" thereby is trivialized, or even said not to exist at all.

Meanwhile, information science has progressed so dramatically that we can use it to model all of this out.  In fact, our models are so powerful that our Chief Nerds of the Moment would have us believe that what is foundational is not what is represented, but the information itself that is reflected in our models.  We can leave all of the ball bearings behind for all practical purposes.  They are like Wittgenstein's ladder, that allowed us to climb to a new perch of philosophical perspicacity, at which point we could toss it away!

But can almighty information exist in a vacuum, without consciousness?  Who or what is in charge of the Information Field writ large?  Is it in charge of itself?  If so, is this Information Field "the Mind of God," in Stephen Hawking's phrase?

All of this effort, all of these centuries, and it seems that we stand in much the same place as where stood the Egyptians and the Polynesians who tried, mostly in vain, to placate the Sun God, the Source, the Great Animating Principle.