John Archibald Wheeler never quite let the universe be. For him, it wasn’t a fixed thing, ticking away in spacetime like a wound-up clock. It was something far stranger—a kind of echo chamber, in which every act of observation played a role in calling the cosmos into being.
In Wheeler’s late work, the universe became participatory. Observers weren’t passive recipients of cosmic facts; they were participants in the very unfolding of those facts. The famous “delayed choice” thought experiments and his “it from bit” thesis painted a picture of reality that was not given in advance, but brought forth through questions asked—choices made—meaning interpreted.
In our relational cosmology, we travel this path with Wheeler but take it a step further.
From Observer to Meaner
Where Wheeler speaks of observers and measurements, we speak of meaners and construal. Observation, for us, is only one of many ways that experience becomes meaningful. Dreams, metaphors, narratives, songs—these too are acts of world-making. They instantiate potential into actual meaning.
Reality is not what is measured, but what is meant.
From Bit to Meaning Potential
Wheeler’s “it from bit” implies that all things arise from yes/no questions—discrete choices collapsing potential into presence. We agree in spirit, but not in grammar.
What collapses potential into instance is not information in the computational sense, but meaning in the semiotic sense. The universe is not a digital answer machine. It is a living web of structured potential—patterns of relation waiting to be construed into being.
The Universe as a Circuit of Meaning
Wheeler imagined a “self-excited circuit”: a universe that gives rise to observers, who in turn bring the universe into being. We might say it this way:
Meaning gives rise to meaners, and meaners give rise to meaning.
This isn’t feedback in time, but instantiation in relation. It’s not that the Big Bang happened, and then produced minds who looked back at it. It’s that the Big Bang is a meaning instantiated now, through acts of construal, by meaners in relation to traces.
The loop is not in spacetime—it is spacetime, understood as a dimension of meaning-making.
Cosmic Collaboration
Wheeler’s cosmos was participatory. Ours is collaborative. Not just between observers and particles, but between histories and narratives, dreams and data, fossils and folk tales. Every act of construal re-sings the universe into being.
So we thank Wheeler—not as a prophet of quantum mysticism, but as a fellow traveller. He showed us that reality asks questions back. We answer, not just with detectors, but with meanings.
And the cosmos listens.
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