NOTICE: This work assumes familiarity with relational and information-based approaches to physics, emergence through coarse-graining, and non-fundamental spacetime. Readers unfamiliar with these perspectives may wish to consult the suggested prerequisite reading material presented here before engaging with the framework described in this collection of mostly technical documents (and any subsequent in development working copy manuscripts, blog posts or opinions).

MASTER PREREQUISITE READING LIST:

▶ I. PHILOSOPHY & ONTOLOGY

▶ A. Classical Metaphysics

• Aristotle — Metaphysics

• Plato — Timaeus

• Spinoza — Ethics

• Leibniz — Monadology

• Descartes — Meditations

• Hume — Human Understanding

▶ B. Modern Philosophy

• Kant — Critique of Pure Reason

• Hegel — Science of Logic

• Schopenhauer — World as Will and Rep.

• Wittgenstein — Tractatus

• Wittgenstein — Philosophical Invstgtns.

• Husserl — Ideas I

▶ C. Process & Relational Ontology

• Whitehead — Process and Reality

• Heidegger — Being and Time

• Deleuze — Difference and Repetition

• Barad — Meeting the Universe Halfway

• Simondon — Individuation

▶ II. STRUCTURAL REALISM & PHILOSOPHY OF

SCIENCE

▶ A. Structure over Substance

• Poincaré — Science and Hypothesis

• Russell — Analysis of Matter

• Cassirer — Substance and Function

• Sagan — The Demon-Haunted World

• Kuhn — Structure of Scientific Revolutions

• Popper — Logic of Scientific Discovery

▶ B. Structural Realism

• Worrall — Structural Realism Papers

• Ladyman & Ross — Every Thing Must Go

• French — The Structure of the World

• Wheeler — Observer-Participancy Essays

▶ III. INFORMATION THEORY & COMPUTATION

▶ A. Classical Information

• Shannon — Math Theory of Comm.

• Kolmogorov — Algorithmic Complexity

• Chaitin — Meta Math!

• Cover /Thomas — Information Theory

▶ B. Computation & Physics

• Turing — Computable Numbers

• Landauer — Information Is Physical

• Bennett — Reversible Computation

• Deutsch — The Fabric of Reality

• Lloyd — Programming the Universe

• Ananthaswamy — Why Machines Learn

▶ C. Neural Computation & Learning Theory

• Hinton — Deep Learning Papers

• LeCun — Energy-Based Models

• Pearl — Causality

• Vapnik — Statistical Learning Theory

▶ D. Prompting & Human-AI Interaction

• Yi Zhou — Prompt Design Patterns

▶ IV. QUANTUM MECHANICS — FOUNDATIONS

▶ A. Formalism

• Dirac — Principles of QM

• Von Neumann — Foundations of QM

• Born — Statistical Interpretation

• Heisenberg — Matrix Mechanics

• Feynman — Lectures Vol III

▶ B. Interpretations

• Everett — Relative State Formulation

• Bohr — Complementarity

• Rovelli — Relational QM

• Fuchs — QBism

• Zeilinger — Info-Based Foundations

• Penrose — Emperor’s New Mind

• Penrose — Shadows of the Mind

• Bell — Nonlocality Papers

▶ V. ENTROPY, THERMODYNAMICS & RG

▶ A. Classical

• Boltzmann — Lectures on Gas Theory

• Gibbs — Statistical Mechanics

▶ B. Emergence & Scaling

• Jaynes — Maximum Entropy

• Prigogine — Order Out of Chaos

• Wilson — Renormalization Group

• Kadanoff — Scaling & Universality

• Goldenfeld — RG Lectures

▶ VI. EMERGENT / ENTROPIC GRAVITY

▶ A. Black Hole Thermodynamics

• Bekenstein — Black Hole Entropy

• Hawking — Black Hole Radiation

▶ B. Gravity as Emergent

• Jacobson — Thermodynamics

• Padmanabhan — Emergent Gravity

• Verlinde — Entropic Gravity

▶ VII. HOLOGRAPHY & ENTANGLEMENT

GEOMETRY

▶ A. Holographic Principle

• ’t Hooft — Dimensional Reduction

• Susskind — Holographic Universe

▶ B. Entanglement = Geometry

• Maldacena — AdS/CFT

• Ryu/Takayanagi — Entanglement

• Van Raamsdonk — Geometry

• Maldacena & Susskind — ER = EPR

• Rangamani/Takayanagi — Holographics

▶ VIII. DISCRETE & PRE-GEOMETRIC SPACETIME

▶ A. Causal Structure

• Sorkin — Causal Set Theory

• Bombelli et al. — Discrete Spacetime

▶ B. Quantum Geometry

• Rovelli & Smolin — Spin Networks

• Regge — Regge Calculus

• Ambjørn & Loll — CDT

• Markopoulou — Quantum Graphity

▶ IX. TENSOR NETWORKS

& ERROR CORRECTION

▶ A. Entanglement RG

• Vidal — MERA

• Swingle — Renormalization

▶ B. Quantum Codes

• Pastawski et al. — Holographic Codes

• Hayden & Preskill — Information

• Harlow — Quantum Error Correction

▶ X. COMPLEX SYSTEMS & AUTOPOIESIS

▶ A. Self-Organization

• Ashby — Cybernetics

• Kauffman — Origins of Order

• S.I.Walker — Life as No One Knows It

• Melanie Mitchell — Complexity

▶ B. Autopoiesis

• Maturana/Varela —

Autopoiesis/Cognition

• Luhmann — Social Systems

▶ C. Predictive Systems

• Friston — Free Energy Principle

• J. Hawkins — On Intelligence

• J. Hawkins — A Thousand Brains

▶ D. Morphogenesis

& Bioelectric Intelligence

• Michael Levin — Bioelectricity

& Morphogenetic Fields Papers

• Turing — Morphogenesis Paper

▶ E. Multiscale Representation Learning

in Matter & Biology

• Soojung Yang — Collective Variables /

Representation Alignment /

Boltzmann Emulator papers

▶ XI. CONSCIOUSNESS & INFORMATION

▶ A. Information-Based Mind

• Tononi — Integrated Info Theory

• Baars — Global Workspace Theory

• Dennett — Consciousness Explained

• C. Koch — Then I Am Myself the World

▶ B. Philosophy of Mind

• Nagel — What Is It Like to Be a Bat?

• Chalmers — The Conscious Mind

• Gazzaniga — Who’s in Charge

▶ C. Self-Reference & Symbolic Emergence

• Hofstadter — Gödel, Escher, Bach

• Hofstadter — I Am a Strange Loop

• Hofstadter — Fluid Concepts and

Creative Analogies

• Hofstadter — Surfaces and Essences

• Hofstadter — Metamagical Themas

▶ D. Language, Recursion

& Symbolic Cognition

• Chomsky — Syntactic Structures

• Chomsky — Minimalist Program

• Chomsky–Fitch — Faculty of Language

▶ XII. ADJACENT / SPECULATIVE FRAMEWORKS

▶ A. Informational Universes

• Wheeler — It from Bit

• Bohm — Implicate Order

• M. Talbot — The Holographic Universe

▶ B. Computational Universes

• Wolfram — A New Kind of Science

• Tegmark — Mathematical Universe

• Tegmark — Life 3.0

▶ C. Timeless Physics

• Barbour — The End of Time