Wheeler's universe participates in its own creation
John Wheeler's revolutionary insight that "no phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon" fundamentally challenges materialist assumptions about reality's nature. His participatory universe concept, developed through decades of quantum physics research, proposes that observation doesn't merely reveal pre-existing properties but actively creates them.
The delayed-choice experiments demonstrate this principle with startling clarity. When observing light from quasars billions of light-years distant, gravitationally lensed by intervening galaxies, our present measurement choices appear to retroactively determine the photon's path—a path supposedly "chosen" billions of years before human consciousness existed. Recent satellite experiments extending thousands of kilometers have validated Wheeler's predictions, confirming that quantum mechanical descriptions supersede classical causality.
Wheeler illustrated this through his famous U-diagram: the universe beginning simply (thin end), evolving complexity over cosmic time (thickening), eventually giving rise to observer-participancy, which then reaches back to give "tangible reality" to the universe's entire history. This self-excited circuit represents reality bootstrapping itself into existence through its own observation—what Wheeler termed "law without law," where physical laws themselves emerge from observer choices rather than existing independently.
The implications extend beyond quantum mechanics. Wheeler's "it from bit" hypothesis proposes that all physical reality derives from information-theoretic processes—binary yes/no questions whose answers create the very phenomena being questioned. Reality becomes fundamentally participatory, with consciousness not as late addition but as essential partner in cosmic becoming. This framework provides the quantum mechanical foundation for understanding consciousness as intrinsic to reality's structure rather than accidental byproduct.