Self-referential Creation (aka Generative Receptivity) generates novelty through reflection
Generative receptivity versus passive submission
There is a crucial distinction between authentic generative receptivity and the patriarchal distortion of passive submission. Elizabeth Johnson demonstrates how receptivity represents "active cooperation with divine creativity" rather than inert waiting. Catherine Keller's process theology shows receptivity as the fundamental mode through which new possibilities are actualized—not through domination but through collaborative emergence.
As Luce Irigaray's philosophical work reveals, reflection engages in "productive mimesis" that doesn't merely copy but creatively interprets and transforms. This aligns with quantum physics insights showing observation itself as creative act—there is no measurement-independent material reality at the micro physical level. It is created by the measurement itself.
Across domains, self-referential processes emerge as the engine of creative advance.
Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy provides a contemporary framework where reality advances through "prehension"—actual occasions "feeling" and incorporating their environment. His formula "the many become one and are increased by one" describes how dimensional reflection generates genuine novelty. God's dipolar nature (primordial and consequent) suggests dimensional reflection operates within divine life itself—God both influences and is influenced by creation.
The biological concept of autopoiesis (self-creation) offers a scientific parallel. Autopoietic systems maintain themselves through their own operations while remaining informationally open, demonstrating how dimensional reflection involves selective permeability. Through self-reference, these systems generate emergent properties not reducible to components—paralleling how kenotic emptying generates creative fullness.
Wheeler's Participatory Universe
John Archibald Wheeler's revolutionary assertion that "no phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon" fundamentally challenges classical notions of objective reality. In Wheeler's participatory universe, observers do not merely discover pre-existing facts; they participate in bringing reality into being through the very act of observation. This principle, encapsulated in his famous "it from bit" hypothesis, suggests that information—answers to yes-or-no questions posed to the universe—constitutes the fundamental building blocks of physical reality.
Wheeler described the universe as a "self-excited circuit" where the cosmos evolves to produce observers who then give tangible reality to the universe, including its past. The delayed-choice experiments Wheeler proposed, demonstrating that future observations can retroactively determine past events,
Wheeler emphasized consciousness not as an emergent property of complex matter but as fundamental to reality's structure. Wheeler's cosmic self-reflection—the universe becoming aware of itself through conscious observers. Wheeler asked, "Are life and mind irrelevant to the structure of the universe, or are they central to it?" His answer—that consciousness serves as the universe's method of self-observation.
The self-excited circuit creates cosmic feedback loops
Wheeler's most elegant metaphor depicts the universe as a self-excited circuit - illustrated by his famous "U" diagram showing the cosmos as a large U shape with an eye at one end observing the other. The universe starts small at one tip, expands through cosmic evolution (the curve of the U), eventually produces conscious observers (the eye), who then give "tangible reality" to the entire system including its earliest moments. This creates a closed causal loop where the universe bootstraps itself into existence through observation.
This isn't merely philosophical speculation but connects to specific quantum mechanical phenomena. Wheeler's delayed-choice experiments demonstrate that measurement decisions made now can determine the past behavior of quantum systems. When extended to cosmic scales using quasar light that traveled billions of years, these experiments suggest that present observations might retroactively determine cosmic history. As Wheeler stated: "The past has no existence except as it is recorded in the present."
The self-excited circuit resolves the apparent paradox of observers creating the universe that created them. Rather than requiring a "first cause," Wheeler proposed a self-consistent loop where existence emerges from the mutual requirement of universe and observer. Physics gives rise to observer-participancy; observer-participancy gives rise to information; information gives rise to physics - completing the circuit.
Experimental evidence supports retroactive reality creation
Wheeler's delayed-choice experiments provide the empirical foundation for his philosophical claims. First proposed in 1978 and since confirmed with increasing precision, these experiments show that the decision whether to measure wave or particle properties can be delayed until after a photon has supposedly already "chosen" its behavior. Modern implementations by Alain Aspect's team achieved space-like separation between measurement choice and photon behavior, eliminating any possibility of classical communication.
The results consistently support Wheeler's predictions: photons don't possess definite properties traveling through experimental apparatus but rather have their entire history determined by the final measurement choice. When experimenters choose to measure interference (wave behavior), the photon behaves as if it traveled both paths. When they measure which path (particle behavior), the photon shows a definite trajectory. Crucially, this choice can be made after the photon has completed its journey.
Recent extensions to massive particles, satellite distances exceeding 3,500 kilometers, and quantum memory systems have universally confirmed these effects. The cosmic version using gravitationally lensed quasar light suggests that measurement choices on Earth today might determine how photons behaved billions of years ago. While interpretations remain debated, the experimental results robustly demonstrate that present measurements affect what we can say about past quantum events.
Information creates matter through "it from bit"
Wheeler crystallized his vision in the phrase "it from bit," proposing that every physical entity ("it") emerges from binary information ("bit") obtained through yes-no questions posed by measurement. First presented at the 1989 Santa Fe Institute, this concept suggests that information is more fundamental than matter, energy, or spacetime itself. Physical properties don't exist independently but arise from accumulated answers to binary measurement questions.
Wheeler illustrated this through his "surprise version" of twenty questions, where no object is pre-selected but emerges through consistent answers to yes-no queries. Similarly, reality emerges from quantum measurements that pose binary questions: Did the detector click? Is the spin up or down? Each measurement forces nature to provide a definite answer, gradually building up the physical world from information.
This framework makes several radical claims. Space and time become secondary to information processing. Physical laws emerge statistically from accumulated measurements rather than existing eternally. The universe fundamentally operates as an information-processing system where conscious observers play an essential role. Wheeler's insight that "every physical quantity derives its ultimate significance from binary choices, bits" anticipated the quantum information revolution by decades.
Quantum cosmology reveals universe bootstrapping itself
Wheeler's collaboration with Bryce DeWitt produced the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, treating the entire universe as a quantum system without external time. This mathematical framework enables "genesis by observership" - the idea that observation brings the universe into existence, including its past history. The equation eliminates time as a fundamental parameter, suggesting that temporal evolution emerges from more basic quantum processes.
The Participatory Anthropic Principle (PAP) extends beyond traditional anthropic reasoning to propose that observers don't merely exist in a compatible universe but actively create it. Through quantum mechanical processes operating across cosmic time, present observations establish which of many possible quantum histories becomes real. Wheeler argued that without observers to collapse the universal wave function, the cosmos would remain in quantum superposition - potential rather than actual.
This connects to the measurement problem in radical ways. If observation is required for reality, and observers emerge from that reality, how does the loop close? Wheeler's answer involves the universe evolving to produce observers who then retroactively create its existence through measurement - a cosmic-scale version of the self-excited circuit. Modern quantum cosmology continues grappling with these ideas through concepts like the Hartle-Hawking wave function and holographic theories.
Modern physics validates information while questioning consciousness
Wheeler's ideas have followed divergent paths in contemporary physics. His information-theoretic vision has triumphed through quantum computing, quantum cryptography, and holographic theories - all building on his insight that information is more fundamental than matter. The term "qubit" (quantum bit) coined by his student Benjamin Schumacher directly embodies Wheeler's "it from bit" concept. Black hole thermodynamics, developed by another student Jacob Bekenstein, connects information to the deepest structures of spacetime.
QBism (Quantum Bayesianism) represents the most sophisticated modern development of Wheeler's participatory ideas. Christopher Fuchs explicitly acknowledges Wheeler's influence, adopting his "participatory realism" while treating quantum states as subjective information rather than objective reality. This preserves the agent-centric view while avoiding claims about consciousness creating physical reality.
See also: Regenerative Mimesis