International Society for the Study of Information Summit (IS4SI Summit)

The Second Quantum Revolution and Its Philosophical Meaning

Hongfang Li

Published Mar 24, 2022• 0 citations

Abstract

The second quantum revolution blurs the distinction between information and matter. “It from (qu)bit or (Qu)bit from it” thus becomes a philosophical issue. According to the physicist Wen Xiaogang in MIT, quantum topological states of matter, formed by long-range entangled qubits, will show all particles, such as light and electrons, are unified by the long-range entanglement of qubits. That is, it from qubit, not bit. Quantum information unifies matter, i.e., quantum information = quantum matter. This represents a new way to view our world. However, the information-theoretical paradigm, which origins from Wheeler’s “it from bit”, can lead to informational immaterialism and instrumentalism. In perspective of the constructive structural realism, there exists a constructive co-dependent structural relationship between quantum information and quantum matter. Both qubit and it are fundamental structural elements for us constructing our understanding of the physical world.

DOI: 10.3390/proceedings2022081071

Related papers

Four revolutions in physics and the second quantum revolution — A unification of force and matter by quantum information

Xiao-Gang Wen

Newton's mechanical revolution unifies the motion of planets in the sky and the falling of apples on Earth. Maxwell's electromagnetic revolution unifies electricity, magnetism, and light. Einstein's relativistic revolution unifies space with time, and gravity with space-time distortion. The quantum revolution unifies particle with waves, and energy with frequency. Each of those revolution changes our world view. In this article, we will describe a revolution that is happening now: the second quantum revolution which unifies matter/space with information. In other words, the new world view suggests that elementary particles (the bosonic force particles and fermionic matter particles) all originated from quantum information (qubits): they are collective excitations of an entangled qubit ocean that corresponds to our space. The beautiful geometric Yang-Mills gauge theory and the strange Fermi statistics of matter particles now have a common algebraic quantum informational origin.

Sep 1, 201811 citations

Four revolutions in physics and the second quantum revolution — A unification of force and matter by quantum information

Xiao-Gang Wen

Newton’s mechanical revolution unifies the motion of planets in the sky and the falling of apples on Earth. Maxwell’s electromagnetic revolution unifies electricity, magnetism, and light. Einstein’s relativistic revolution unifies space with time, and gravity with space–time distortion. The quantum revolution unifies particle with waves, and energy with frequency. Each of those revolution changes our world view. In this article, we will describe a revolution that is happening now: the second quantum revolution which unifies matter/space with information. In other words, the new world view suggests that elementary particles (the bosonic force particles and fermionic matter particles) all originated from quantum information (qubits): they are collective excitations of an entangled qubit ocean that corresponds to our space. The beautiful geometric Yang–Mills gauge theory and the strange Fermi statistics of matter particles now have a common algebraic quantum informational origin.

arXiv:1709.03824International Journal of Modern Physics BSep 27, 20189 citations

Philosophy of Quantum Information and Entanglement

Alisa Bokulich, Gregg S. Jaeger

Recent work in quantum information science has produced a revolution in our understanding of quantum entanglement. Scientists now view entanglement as a physical resource with many important applications. These range from quantum computers, which would be able to compute exponentially faster than classical computers, to quantum cryptographic techniques, which could provide unbreakable codes for the transfer of secret information over public channels. These important advances in the study of quantum entanglement and information touch on deep foundational issues in both physics and philosophy. This interdisciplinary volume brings together fourteen of the world's leading physicists and philosophers of physics to address the most important developments and debates in this exciting area of research. It offers a broad spectrum of approaches to resolving deep foundational challenges - philosophical, mathematical, and physical - raised by quantum information, quantum processing, and entanglement. This book is ideal for historians, philosophers of science and physicists.

Cambridge University Press eBooksJun 10, 2010136 citations

Overview: A New Kind of Science

Richard Healey

This overview introduces the book’s aim of showing how quantum theory marks a radical break from previous scientific theorizing: We are warranted in accepting the fundamental status within contemporary physics of a theory that posits no new physical entities or magnitudes of its own. By contrast with existing interpretations that attempt to say how the world could possibly be the way quantum theory says it is, a pragmatist takes understanding quantum theory to be a matter of knowing how it is applied, and how the theory’s various elements function in these applications. So Part I of the book offers a simple, self-contained presentation of quantum theory, emphasizing applications; while Part II says why the quantum revolution matters for philosophy. Coming to terms with the quantum revolution involves adopting views of scientific theorizing, probability, causation, explanation, objectivity, meaning, and fundamentality that philosophers should have arrived at without its prompting.

Oxford University Press eBooksJul 20, 20170 citations

Introduction: John Bell and the second quantum revolution

James S. Bell

The quantum revolutions: from concepts to technology The development of quantum mechanics in the beginning of the twentieth century was a unique intellectual adventure, which obliged scientists and philosophers to change radically the concepts they used to describe the world. After these heroic efforts, it became possible to understand the stability of matter, the mechanical and thermal properties of materials, the interaction between radiation and matter, and many other properties of the microscopic world that had been impossible to understand with classical physics. A few decades later, that conceptual revolution enabled a technological revolution , at the root of our information-based society. It is indeed with the quantum mechanical understanding of the structure and properties of matter that physicists and engineers were able to invent and develop the transistor and the laser – two key technologies that now permit the high-bandwidth circulation of information, as well as many other scientific and commercial applications. After such an accumulation of conceptual – and eventually technological – successes, one might think that by 1960 all the interesting questions about quantum mechanics had been raised and answered. However, in his now-famous paper of 1964 – one of the most remarkable papers in the history of physics – John Bell drew the attention of physicists to the extraordinary features of entanglement: quantum mechanics describes a pair of entangled objects as a single global quantum system, impossible to be thought of as two individual objects, even if the two components are far apart.

Cambridge University Press eBooksJun 3, 200427 citations

Both classical & quantum information; both bit & qubit: transcendental time, or the phenomenon of time

Vasil Dinev Penchev

Information can be considered as the most fundamental, philosophical, physical and mathematical concept originating from the totality by means of physical and mathematical transcendentalism (the counterpart of philosophical transcendentalism). Classical and quantum information, particularly by their units, bit and qubit, correspond and unify the finite and infinite. As classical information is relevant to finite series and sets, as quantum information, to infinite ones. A fundamental joint relativity of the finite and infinite, of the external and internal is to be investigated. That relativity can be interpreted as a kind of epoche similar to Husserl’s, but in relation to finiteness and infinity, to classical and quantum information, to the direction of time arrow. The concept of transcendental time, or the Husserl phenomenon of time can be introduced after that epoche in relation to the direction of time arrow. Its correlate is that information invariant to the finite and infinite therefore unifying both classical and quantum information. The separable complex Hilbert space of quantum mechanics can be represented equivalently as the “qubit space” of quantum information and doubled dually or “complimentary” by “Hilbert arithmetic” (being relevant to classical information). Hilbert arithmetic mediates and overcomes the Godel incompleteness of Peano arithmetic and set theory. Set theory and propositional logic can be considered as the same structure and opposed to Peano arithmetic: however, this is an opposition reconciled by Hilbert arithmetic.

Apr 10, 20212 citations