3 The Assumption of “Information” Revisited

Physics often treats information as if it were a tangible substance or an ontological primitive. From black hole entropy to quantum information, the discourse frames bits and qubits as elements that the universe “contains” or “transmits.” The assumption is seductive: information becomes a bridge from the physical to the conceptual, a kind of hidden stuff underlying reality.

Yet information is never observed in itself. It is always a projection of relational patterning: distinctions made within a system under a particular perspective. Measurement extracts it, encoding one set of potentialities as recognisable outcomes. Randomness and constraints shape its emergence. What we call information is a relational alignment — a codification of admissible patterns, not a fundamental entity.

By treating information as a substance or an ontological feature, physics reifies the symbolic scaffolding of its own models. It conflates modal assessments (what distinctions can be made, what patterns can be actualised) with modulation (what must exist as a thing). The universe does not store or transmit “information” in the way physics imagines; it presents structured potentials that observers construe and stabilise.

Recognising information as relational rather than absolute preserves its explanatory power while returning it to the domain of modality: degrees of potentiality, structured distinctions, and perspectival cuts. In doing so, it aligns with a vision of physics where reality is not decreed, but interpreted, enacted, and made intelligible through relational construal.