John Wheeler's Participatory Universe

Physicist John Archibald Wheeler, who coined such terms as “black hole”, “wormhole”, and “quantum foam” wrote about his concept of the “Participatory Universe” in the inspiration for today’s episode — Wheeler’s paper entitled Beyond the Black Hole.Wheeler describes his “delayed choice experiment” which shows that not only does an electron behave as a particle when observed and a wave when not observed, but that we can delay our choice in whether to observe it and then after making the choice, the electron will behave accordingly. Quantum strangeness like that implies that we as observers have a definite role in shaping the “reality” around us.Wheeler used the analogy of a letter R (for reality) made of papier-mâché where there are definite iron post observations that mark out the structure of reality, but we fill in the rest with our own theories based on those observations.But aren’t we a part of reality as well? In a way, yes, our human appearance is also a part of the reality we observe. In that way, Wheeler said, we are participating in our own creation. And this participation is not just on our own mental scale, but Wheeler says it extends to the whole universe as observed by all observers. Wheeler drew this iconic picture of the universe looking back at itself to illustrate his point. The Big Bang is the top right of the picture where the universe “U” then expands and ultimately creates observers (represented by the eyeball at top left) which can then look back at the whole history of the universe and thereby bring it into a sort of papier-mâché being.We play this role for the universe. We get what we look for. Looking down, I find a torso, arms and legs and the earth at my feet. Directing my attention to where those arms and legs and earth are sticking out of, I see just pure nothingness, the source where all that creation comes from and the subject which is the observer of that creation. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit headlessdeepdive.substack.com