Digital Physics - History

History

Every computer must be compatible with the principles of information theory, statistical thermodynamics, and quantum mechanics. A fundamental link among these fields was proposed by Edwin Jaynes in two seminal 1957 papers. Moreover, Jaynes elaborated an interpretation of probability theory as generalized Aristotelian logic, a view very convenient for linking fundamental physics with digital computers, because these are designed to implement the operations of classical logic and, equivalently, of Boolean algebra.

The hypothesis that the universe is a digital computer was pioneered by Konrad Zuse in his book Rechnender Raum (translated into English as Calculating Space). The term digital physics was first employed by Edward Fredkin, who later came to prefer the term digital philosophy. Others who have modeled the universe as a giant computer include Stephen Wolfram, Juergen Schmidhuber, and Nobel laureate Gerard 't Hooft. These authors hold that the apparently probabilistic nature of quantum physics is not necessarily incompatible with the notion of computability. Quantum versions of digital physics have recently been proposed by Seth Lloyd, David Deutsch, and Paola Zizzi.

Related ideas include Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker's binary theory of ur-alternatives, pancomputationalism, computational universe theory, John Archibald Wheeler's "It from bit", and Max Tegmark's ultimate ensemble.