Physics of Meaning
On the generation of meaning from our interactions with reality
“No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon”
- John Archibald Wheeler
In our conscious ordering of the non-ordered world, we excavate meaning from our surrounding reality.
The whole point and purpose of what we are is sourced from our ability to classify chaos and interpret information; riding the currents of synchronization, we harmonize our place in space and time.
And as we collapse the wave functions to breathe life into those opportunities pursued, we get better at creating the intended actualities that we want from the pools of probability that we swim through.
Its our consciousness that converts the all-encompassing nonsense into something digestible and functional, that draws something from nothing, allowing us to be more than just another link on a food chain during our brief spark of an existence.
Because our consciousness is the only thing that runs contrary to the laws of nature (say, those of thermodynamics or relativity), we’re brought to a pivotal fork in the road: either such a movement through the wilderness of reality means nothing at all or it means absolutely everything.
Either this is all just randomized particle collisions in the cold vacuums of space, or those collisions consecrate into meaningful outcomes with reverberating consequences of significance.
“Consciousness is not just a passive epiphenomenon, but has a role to play in the physics of the universe”
- Roger Penrose
Any sort of meaning is preceded by energy — by the fricative output of effort. And this output is invariably demanding.
While the antithesis of such a process is the conservation of energy — of those things comfortable or effortless — we’ve come to discern an understanding that there’s seldom ever little meaning to be found in those undertakings that we consider easy.
And so we seem to know enough by now to trust in an obvious equation: increased effort equates to greater meaning, regardless of whether that meaning is intentional or favorable.
Good or bad, triumphant or tragic, the substance of meaning will always stick.
It catalyzes lessons, improvements, or simple reverence; it offers a return on investment that may not have been asked for nor anticipated, but one that proves more than worthwhile.
The experience of having kids is probably the most potent example of this formula; the nirvana of child-rearing requires an inconceivable investment of energy and offers an inconceivable level of reward.
Those things more worth pursuing will obviously require more sacrifice; it’s simple physics if we liken meaning to mass.
“As we penetrate into matter, nature does not show us any isolated ‘building blocks,’ but rather appears as a complicated web of relations between the various parts of the whole. These relations always include the observer in an essential way.
The human observer constitutes the final link in the chain of observational processes, and the properties of any atomic object can be understood only in terms of the object’s interaction with the observer.”
- Fritjof Capra
Laws of thermodynamics and conceptualizations from eastern spirituality all make the same point — that mass, in its density and gravity, demands energy for movement and transformation. The more weight something (an object, an idea, a philosophy, a goal) carries, the more force is required to shift it.
From many spiritual perspectives, the heaviest truths are often the hardest to move toward because they require a more dedicated shedding of comfort and attachment.
From a psychological or existential perspective, sacrifice isn’t just a cost — it’s the currency of meaning. The depth of what we value is directly proportional to what we’re willing to endure in pursuit of it.
Through a metaphysical understanding, if we see meaning as mass, then effort becomes a form of gravity — pulling us closer to or farther from our potential. The stronger the field of purpose, the greater the resistance, but also the more powerful the pull toward transformation.
Consciousness, as the key variable in all of this, can thus be seen as the penultimate form of energy — a field of awareness that collapses into reality through intention and action. Just as mass warps spacetime, the weight of our focus bends the shape of our experiences, drawing events and meaning into the orbit of our attention.
From the births of nebulas to the collisions of particles, energy is required to enact change and to transform or to evolve; the unspoken pulse throughout the whole process is meaning.
“Man is a microcosm of the universe; therefore, what man is, is a clue to the universe. We are enfolded in the universe”
- David Bohm
And so there’s some irony in the fact that we all seem to be searching for meaning despite the fact that we are, by default, the result of a very meaningful process.
Our search in itself implies some pretty serious significance that’s often lost in our individualized swims through life.
It may be why we’re fascinated with affixing a sense of importance to our existence and to everything that we do; our very movement through space and time, as we skip along the chain-links of causality, prompts the emergence of meaning.
Our pursuits bind us to our environment, and our impressions upon reality are what mean everything; while being the catalyst, we’re also the byproduct, the cause and effect, the receiver and the signal.
It’s from such a flowing consciousness that reality isn’t so much interpreted but constructed.
Classical physics had viewed our position as one of interpretation — of sensing the world in order to harvest data, adapt, and evolve within it. It allowed us to move towards a fourth dimension of existence.
Quantum physics only adds a prefix of ‘super’ to our position[ing], and dresses things up in subatomic perspectives that tantalizingly compliment the macro-cosmic. Collapsing wave functions, leveraging probability, breaking free from the orbits of a four-dimensional existence.
And we seem to be moving even beyond the quantum; an inevitability we didn’t exactly expect because, well, it can’t be expected, let alone imagined.
All the while, each new echelon of understanding and perspective reveals to us an instinctive but elusive truth: reality is far more subjective than we often appreciate.
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