Information and the Three Worlds View in Science and the Bible
Hartmut Ising
Einstein realized that his equations of General Theory of Relativity resulted in an expanding universe with the consequence of a beginning and added a constant to avoid the expansion. He believed in the world view of Aristotle and not in the Bible. Later he said: “This was my biggest blunder” (“Das war meine groesste Eselei”).
Having read this, I turned to the Bible to seek scriptures which could lead to a deeper understanding of nature, and I found information to be a suitable subject.
The significance of information in the physical world was emphasized by J.A. Wheeler [1]. He coined the expression „It from bit“ and explained: “It from bit symbolizes the idea that every item of the physical world has at bottom – at a very deep bottom, in most instances – an immaterial source and explanation; that what we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registered of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that things physical are information-theoretic in origin.”
However, the importance of information was well known to Bible scholars for many centuries. The act of God’s creating is explained in the Bible as the act of the Creator’s speaking. In the Bible the Word (Information) is even taken to be identical with God. The first sentence of the Gospel according to John is an example:” In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
In the current paper we will study different aspects of information in connection to ideology and the three worlds view. On the basis of research results concerning
the process of dying it will be demonstrated, that the mind is able to perceive visual and auditory information independent of the brain. We will argue that the mental world is closely related to the world described by quantum physics and that a quantum world exists, which is different from the macroscopic world. The photon’s eigen-world is – according to Special Relativity – independent of time and space and, therefore, it is identical with the world of information and God. Finally, a hypothetical equivalence of information flux and energy will be suggested.
The Three Worlds View
Karl Popper [2] positioned world 2 of Self or Mind between the physical world 1 and the world 3 of culture. A slightly different version of the three worlds view was suggested by Sir Roger Penrose [3]: 1) Physical world, 2) Mental world, 3) Platonic world of mathematical concepts. To this view the physicist and philosopher C.-F. v. Weizsaecker [4] added information: “Today mankind starts to become accustomed to the fact that information has to be taken as a third thing beside matter and consciousness. This is a rediscovery of an old truth. It is the Platonic Eidos and the Aristotelic Form in new clothes so that even a man in the 20th century may learn to have some idea of it.”
God created the temporal and the eternal world and is independent of his creation. God’s world is independent of time and space.
Table 1 Different variants of the three worlds view
Popper [2] | Penrose [3]/Weizsaecker [4] | Bible | |
World 1 | Physical World | Physical World | Temporal World |
World 2 | The Self | Mental World | Eternal World |
World 3 | World of Culture | Platonic World of Mathematical Concepts/Information | God’s World |
Fig.1 The Biblical three worlds view.
2 Three forms of information
Three forms of information will be differentiated. As a first form we will discuss ideas. Creative work starts in the mind. For example: a composer is seeking a short melody as a theme for his new composition. First trials are discarded till finally he has found his theme. This whole work was done only in his mind. Nobody had ever heard the melody. Then the composer plays the new melody on the piano. Before this first playing it existed as 1) pure information in his mind. Music played represents 2) a flux of information – information as a function of time. When recorded it is transformed to 3) stored information – information as a function of space.
“In the beginning was the Word”, these are the first words of the gospel according to John. Verse 3 continues: “All things were made by him.” In the first sentence of the Bible also a beginning is mentioned: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Is the meaning of the two beginnings identical?
John continues: “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Since God is eternal this beginning has to be distinguished from the beginning of creation. In contrast to God’s planning Philo of Alexandria explained that God did not create the world at a certain moment in time: “But God is the creator of time” [5].
Therefore, the beginning in John 1,1 is the eternity of God, described in Psalm 90,2:
“Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.” The beginning in Genesis 1,1 is the beginning of time when God spoke his word and created the two worlds, the eternal and the temporal world.
In the eternal world time has a beginning and no end; this is represented in Fig.1 by a circle with an arrow indicating the beginning. In the temporal world time has both beginning and end and is represented by a straight line.
The eternal world was completed in the moment the Creator’s command was spoken: “He commanded, and it stood fast” (Psalm 33,9). In contrast to this, the temporal world which is our universe is being stretched out: “He stretches out the heavens as a curtain, and spreads them out as a tent to dwell in” (Isaiah 40,22). The basis of correct Bible interpretation is summarized in Psalm 119,160 (Darby): “The sum of thy word is truth.”
The expanding of the universe was first observed by Hubble in accordance to Einstein’s original General Relativity. From this we know that the universe has a finite and increasing volume; but it is unlimited. Space is curved and can be illustrated one dimension lower as the surface of an inflating balloon. By the inflation the distances on the surface of the balloon are increasing.
Thinking about this illustration we should ask our self, in which space the universe is being expanded? My suggestion is: Our universe is being expanded in the 4-dimensional space of the eternal world.
In Revelation 21,16-17 the Heavenly Jerusalem is described as a cube; additional the height of the wall is given: “The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal. And he measured the wall thereof, a hundred and forty and four cubits.” From this description I conclude that this city is 4-dimensional and as a consequence the eternal world is 4-dimensional in space.
Information in planning and in speaking
Philo distinguishes the planning from the act of creation "But the seal is an Idea of Ideas, according to which God fashioned the world, being an incorporeal Idea, comprehensible only by the intellect"…"The incorporeal world then was already completed, having its seat in the Divine Logos and the world, perceptible by the external senses, was made on the model of it"[6]. In John 1,1 the word in Greek is logos which has the meaning of word, plan idea. In contrast to the planning Philo explained that the act of creation is God’s speaking. "For God while he spoke the word, did at the same moment create” [7]. In accordance to this Hebrews 11,3 states: “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word (rhema: the spoken word) of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.”
From this we conclude, that the act of creating was the pronouncing of the Creator’s command at the beginning of time. A spoken word is a flow of information in time. In Psalm 148,5 we read: “He commanded, and they were created.” The plan of creation however, is pure information independent of time.
John Lennox [8] explains the wide scope of information: “Now comes my radical suggestion. I think the time has come to accept both the existence of an ‘information first’ universe and of additional historical informational singularities – at least at the origin of life and the origin of human consciousness. However, information first essentially implies consciousness first – not, of course, human consciousness, but the consciousness of the Mind of God.
3 Different worlds with and without limitation of information
In the physical world information is bound to limitations. The most prominent example for this is Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. It quantifies the limitation of information about a particle, which can be perceived in the macroscopic world.
Examples for the limitation of information transfer in the macroscopic world are the limited resolution of an optical imaging system and the limitation of signal transfer by the bandwidth of an electronic circuit.
The smallest length with a physical meaning is given by Planck’s length. Similarly, the shortest duration of time is Planck’s time. Therefore, a given length and a given duration cannot be divided ad infinitum. In contrast to this the divisibility in mathematics is unlimited. The laws of physics are expressed in continuum mathematics – information, however, is discontinuous and always limited in a computer – a series of single bits.
Zeilinger [9] emphasized “that all knowledge in physics has to be expressed in propositions and that therefore the most elementary system represents the truth value of one proposition, i.e., it carries just one bit of information.” To combine the discontinuous information with continuum mathematics unlimited information would be necessary which obviously is impossible for a computer. In contrast to this the human mind is able to cope with infinity. This is an indication for a fundamental difference between the macroscopic world of the brain and the world of the mind.
The mind has access to another world where information is unlimited, the Platonic world of mathematical concepts. Roger Penrose [3] wrote about this world: ”Plato made it clear that the mathematical propositions – the things that could be regarded as unassailably true – referred not to actual physical objects (like the approximate squares, triangles, circles, spheres, and cubes that might be constructed from marks in the sand, or from wood or stone) but to certain idealized entities. He envisaged that these ideal entities inhabited a different world, distinct from the physical world. Today, we might refer to this world as the Platonic world of mathematical forms....”
“The mathematical forms of Plato’s world clearly do not have the same kind of existence as do ordinary physical objects such as tables and chairs. They do not have spatial locations; nor do they exist in time. Objective mathematical notions must be thought of as timeless entities and are not to be regarded as being conjured into existence at the moment that they are first humanly perceived.”
Limitations of divisibility and of information in the macroscopic world 1 and in world 3 of Popper/Penrose/Weizsaecker are compared in Table 2.
Table 2 Divisibility and information limitations in world 1 and world 3
World 1 | Macroscopic World | Limited divisibility of space and time, limited information and information transfer |
World 2 | Quantum/mental World | intermediary |
World 3 | World of ideas/mathematics /information | Independent of time and space, unlimited divisibility and information |
World 1 is termed “macroscopic world”. In the following the macroscopic world will be distinguished from the “quantum world”, which will be placed in the modified three worlds view together with the mental world as an intermediary between the macroscopic world and the world of ideas/ mathematics/information. The mental world 2 acts as an intermediary between world 1 and 3. The human mind has the capability to deal with the unlimited divisibility and infinity in world 3 – “God put eternity into the human heart” (Eccleseastic 3,11).
4 Information and the mind-brain problem
For a deeper understanding of the mind-brain problem a wider world view than naturalism is necessary. Studies on experiences during cardiac arrest provide important scientific insight.
Lommel et al [10] reported the results of a prospective study on near death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest. Three years later Lommel [11] commented: “During cardiac arrest, the functioning of the brain and of other cells in our body stops because of anoxia... Such understanding fundamentally changes one’ s opinion about death, because of the almost unavoidable conclusion that at the time of physical death consciousness will continue to be experienced.”
Sam Parnia started a prospective study (AWAreness during REsuscitation) to test the claims of Lommel. He explained [12]: “In the AWARE study, a 57-year-old man described the perception of observing events from the top corner of the room, and continued to experience a sensation of looking down from above. He accurately described people, sounds, and activities from his resuscitation. His medical records corroborated his accounts and specifically supported his descriptions and the use of an automated external defibrillator (AED). Current AED algorithms show that this likely corresponded with up to 3 min of conscious awareness during cardiopulmonary arrest and CPR.”
Sam Parnia wrote in 2024 in his book “Lucid Dying”: “The brain is an instrument that relays information to and from both the internal and external worlds, but “consciousness” is a separate and subtle scientific entity that interacts directly with it.”
In this interaction gamma waves play a significant role – even in the dying brain.
He summarizes a great number of reports given by patients after recovery from unconsciousness: “While the doctors and nurses fight to save the individual, the dying person’s sense of their own consciousness becomes enormously vast: like the cosmos compared with the Earth. In this state of hyperexpanded and hyperlucid consciousness, people are filled with a deep and profound understanding of themselves and of life: they are liberated from their body yet have a hyperconscious awareness of all events around and beyond themselves all at once and in 360 degrees. They realize that their real self is their consciousness, not the body” [13].
5 Quantum approaches to the mind-brain interaction
Several ideas are discussed to explain the mind-brain interaction by quantum effects.
Here only Henry Stapp’s approach will be discussed. He wrote [14]: “Orthodox quantum mechanics brings into the dynamics certain conscious choices that are not determined by the currently known laws of physics but have important causal effects in the physical world… The proposed solution... is based on a postulated connection between effort, attention, and the quantum Zeno effect. This solution explains on the basic of quantum physics a large amount of heretofore unexplained data amassed by psychologists.”
Later Schwartz, Stapp and Beauregard added [15]: “These orthodox quantum equations applied to human brains in the way suggested by John von Neumann, provide for a causal account of recent neuropsychological data. In this account brain behavior that appears to be caused by mental effort is actually caused by mental effort: the causal efficacy of mental effort is no illusion. Our willful choices enter neither as redundant nor epiphenomenal effects, but rather as fundamental dynamical elements that have the causal efficacy that the objective data appear to assign to them.”
Additional Stapp explained: “It is becoming increasingly clear that at least some of our normal conscious experiences are associated with ∼ 40 Hz synchronous oscillations of the electromagnetic fields at a collection of brain sites.” For support he quoted J. Fell et al. [16]: "Is Synchronized Neural Gamma Activity Relevant for Selective Attention?”
An interaction of the mind and the quantum world is implied by the following statement of Zeilinger [17]: “The assumption that a particle possesses both position and momentum, before the measurement is made, is wrong. Our choice of measurement apparatus decides which of these quantities can become reality in the experiment.” Adding Sapp’s statement that “certain conscious choices that are not determined by the currently known laws of physics have important causal effects in the physical world” we may conclude that conscious choices which are events in the mental world, cause effects in the quantum world via interaction of macroscopic devices with quantum phenomena. By this interaction information is transmitted from the quantum world into the macroscopic world. This can be taken as an argument for the following modification of the three worlds view:
World 2 acts as an intermediary between the macroscopic world 1 and world 3 of ideas/mathematics /information. The world of quantum physics belongs together with the human mind to this world 2 – however – measurements are not included in the quantum world since they are performed in the macroscopic world 1.
According to the modified three worlds view the state-vector reduction is the return from calculations with complex time to results in real time – the return from a theoretical investigation of world 2 to experimental results in world 1. Since measurements are conducted in world 1 our only approach to the quantum world itself is – from this point of view – limited to the theoretical approach.
From this point of view the search for a unification of quantum physics and relativity appears as a journey down a cul-de-sac. This seems to be in accordance with Robert Laughlin’s book [18] “A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down.” The German version of this book has the subtitle: “Abschied von der Weltformel (Farewell to the Theory for Everything).”
6 The three worlds view and different forms of information
We all know different forms of information, i.e. thoughts, spoken words to express thoughts and printed words to store information. In the following we will discuss the connection between the three worlds view and these forms of information.
We will use an example given by Penrose [19] who quoted a letter ascribed to Mozart: “When I feel well ... or in the night when I cannot sleep, thoughts crowd into my mind as easily as you could wish.... Those, which please me I keep in my head and hum them; at least others have told me that I do so. Once I have my theme another melody comes, linking itself with the first one, in accordance with the needs of the composition as a whole... I keep expanding it, conceiving it more and more clearly until I have the entire composition finished in my head though it may be long. Then my mind seizes it as a glance of my eye a beautiful picture or a handsome youth. It does not come to me successively, with various parts worked out in detail, as they will later on, but in its entirety that my imagination lets me hear it.”
In this letter the creation of a complete composition in the composer’s mind is described. The author of this letter most probably was Mozart for it is documented that Mozart did not work on music manuscripts. He wrote the final version without any earlier written versions with corrections. Mozart first created the complete composition in his mind in a kind of holistic form (in world 3 of ideas). In this stage his composition existed as pure information and was accessible only to his mind. Then his mind (world 2) transferred it part by part into time series (my imagination lets me hear it) and later by humming and by writing the final manuscript he transferred his composition into the macroscopic world 1.
After the pure mental work in world 3 the imaginative hearing can be interpreted as a transformation of pure information in world 3 into a flux of information in world 2. Later by humming some parts the information was transformed into a flux of information in world 1. Finally, by writing the music down, after having “the entire composition finished in my head though it may be long” – he transformed the pure information into stored information on paper. In this example three types of information are distinguished as shown in Table 4.
Table 4 Different forms of information
Pure Information | Information independent of time, space and physical information carriers |
Dynamic Information | Information as a function of time or change of information per time in a system |
Static Information | Information stored as a function of space (on paper, CD, memory chip, brain, DNA...) |
In Table 5 the connection of the different forms of information with the three worlds are shown.
Table 5 Different forms of information in the three worlds
World 3 | Pure Information |
World 2 | Pure Information, Dynamic Information |
World 1 | Dynamic Information, Static Information |
In the letter quoted above the dynamic information is the intermediary form of information between pure information in world 3 and static information stored in world 1.
Static information can be transformed into dynamic information, for example by playing back a stored signal electronically. This process occurs in world 1 and is subjected to a limitation of signal transfer by the bandwidth of electronic circuits.
World 3 includes the eigen-world of light
Wheeler [1] explained: “When a photon is absorbed, and thereby “measured” – until its absorption, it had no true reality – an unsplittable bit of information is added to what we know about the world.”
Zeilinger [9] added “The assumption that a particle (e.g. a photon) possesses both position and momentum, before the measurement is made, is wrong. Our choice of measurement apparatus decides which of these quantities can become reality in the experiment.”
Until absorption a photon has no true reality in our macroscopic world – it is neither a particle nor a wave – but in the process of absorption it appears in our world either as particle or as wave. However, what is a photon before it is absorbed in the macroscopic world? What is the Photon in the “eigen-world” of light?
The Lorentz-Transformations for time dilatation and length contraction are:
Time dilatation: Δt = Δtrest /(1-v2/c2)1/2
Length contraction: Δr = Δrrest (1-v2/c2)1/2
Since the velocity v of the photon is c, Δt becomes infinite and zero. Therefore, light in its eigen-world is independent of time and space.
What is a photon in its eigen-world? Before its absorption in our world it is in its eigen-world an “unsplittable” unit of information. We may, therefore, describe the photon as the elementary unit of pure information 1 bit, independent not only of time and space but also independent of a carrier. The existence of the eigen-world of the photon is evidence for the existence of Penrose’s world 3.
7 Transfer of the photon’s information to our world
In the following an information-theoretic interpretation of Planck’s formula will be deduced for the energy E of a photon which equals the frequency ν times Planck’s constant h: E = h ν.
The deduction follows a gedankenexperiment by Brukner and Zeilinger [20] from which they concluded, ”that a single particle in Young’s experiment is just the representative of one bit of information – and ...that the most basic notion of quantum mechanics is information. ”
Young’s experiment can be interpreted as follows: The transmission of the information 1 bit from the eigen-world of the photon to the detector is the elementary flux of information i1=1bit/🛆t. For the formulation of a quantitative hypothesis the time span 🛆t of this information transmission has to be determined.
For this purpose, the gedankenexperiment of Brukner and Zeilinger is modified: Instead of path and interference, energy and time are used as variables. Analogous to their approach, where interference was treated as a dichotomous unit, the continuous energy must be replaced by a dichotomous energy. This can be achieved by using a light source with the a priori information that its frequency can be either ν/2 or ν and with low intensity so that the emission of single photons can be observed. For the frequency determination the classic double slit set up is being used. If one slit is closed no interference pattern appears, the photon appears as a particle. The decision to use a double slit is made in the mental world and has the effect that the photon in the moment of interaction with the macroscopic world manifests itself as wave. The photo detector is positioned behind the slits so that the distances from the two slits differ by one wave length λ. If a photon reaches this location it can only have the energy E = h ν since no photon with the frequency ν/2 can reach this point.
The experimental system of this gedankenexperiment consists of the double slit, the photo detector in a special location and one photon representing the information 1 bit. In order to transmit the photon’s information into our world its presence at the detector has to be detected. The detection process is identical with the absorption of the photon. Therefore, the absorption of the photon can be interpreted as the transmission of 1bit information from the photon in its eigen-world to the photo detector in our world.
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The photon in its eigen-world is neither particle nor wave but the elementary unit of information 1 bit. The interaction between the photon in its eigen-world and the macroscopic world begins at the double slit – the point at which the photon manifests itself as a wave. The detection process commences when the wave reaches the detector via the shorter path and ends with its arrival along the longer one. The duration of absorption is thus given by 🛆t = λ/c. Thus, the information transfer from the photon in its eigen-world to the detector in our world is determined and the elementary flux of information has been quantified to be i1 = 1bit c/λ.
Therefore, Planck’s formula for the energy of a photon E = hν can be interpreted as Planck’s constant h multiplied by the elementary information flux i1: E = h i1.
Energy hypothesis for a complex information flux
For the transmission of a complex signal with the information n bit the complex information flux I is defined. If the transmission is carried out in a given time interval 🛆t the time interval for the individual bit becomes 🛆t/n and the information flux is I = n i1.
The above described gedankenexperiment consists of a double slit, a photo detector and 1 bit of information in the form of a photon. The absorption of the photon or the decrease of 1 bit of information causes an increase of energy at the detector. Therefore, an increase of information in a system will be equivalent to a negative energy: – E = I h.
These considerations lead to the hypothesis of a generalized energy conservation law: The sum of the energy E plus a relativistic term, m c2 plus a new quantum-physical term, I h is constant: E + m c2 + I h = constant [21].
A flux of complex information may be created by playing back stored information or by transforming pure information into a flux of information. The spoken word of God is an example for the latter. In creation God transformed his eternal plan/word (Greek logos) into the spoken word (Greek rhema).
This spoken word is used for the “word of his power” by which God upholds all things (letter to the Hebrews 1,3). This Bible word led me to the idea that the dark energy suggested by astronomers to explain the accelerated expansion of the universe may be this “word of his power.”
The unidirectional time flow in our world is one of the great problems of physics today. Penrose [19] explained that a fine tuning of 1/ e10123 is necessary to explain this time flow. This fine tuning corresponds to an information of about 10123 bit. We will estimate the resulting energy according to the above described hypothesis, when this huge information is flowing through the universe. The longest possible duration for this information flow is the age of the universe. Planck´s constant multiplied with the information 10123 bit and divided by nearly 14 billion years is the resulting negative (“dark”) energy. Divided by the volume of the observable universe we get for the resulting energy density approximately 10-15 Joule/cm3, which match the astronomical observations. A negative energy density acts as a pressure which is thought to cause the accelerated expansion of the universe.
Feasibility of an experimental test of the hypothesis
An experimental model of negative („dark“) energy seems to be possible by measuring the repulsive force F between two glass fibers through which the information flux Iflux = 20 Tbit/s is flowing [22]. This force F is F = (E/d) n, with E = Ifluxh the energy equivalent of the information flux and n the number of bit in a fiber with the length l = 1 m and the diameter
d = 10-6 m. With these Parameters the expected force would be F = 1.3 nN.
A force measuring instrument was developed by PTB (Physikalisch Technische Bundesanstalt) [23] with a measuring range 0.1 pN ≤ Fm <10 μN and the uncertainty of 10-3 at 1 nN.
Conclusion
An experimental test of the hypothetical equivalence between energy and information flux is necessary as a next step on the way to a quantitative theory of information in Physics. The three worlds view is essentially confirmed by science, however, not generally accepted by the scientific community. The reason seems to be the dominating naturalistic world view. Penrose described his three worlds view in his book “The Road to Reality” [3]. This road leads to his three worlds view. The philosopher Thomas Nagel [25] argued for a wider world view in his book “Mind and Cosmos”: “Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False”. He hoped to find an answer in accordance with atheism. In contrast to this Francis Bacon talked of “God’s Two Books – the Book of Nature and the Bible.”
Literature
Physics. New York: Norton & Co., 1998.
Foundations of Physics 29 (1999), p. 631.
(2025-11)