About:
Aims: The primary aim of this work is to investigate whether spacetime geometry, gravitational dynamics, quantum behavior, and macroscopic autonomy can be understood as emergent descriptions of a single underlying informational process, rather than as fundamentally distinct ontological domains.
More specifically, the aims are:
1. To construct a pre-geometric framework in which the fundamental substrate is a relational, non-spatial informational structure, avoiding the assumption of spacetime as a primitive background.
2. To define explicit, bounded dynamics for an informational field on this substrate, ensuring well-posedness and the avoidance of singular behavior at all scales.
3. To examine how familiar physical descriptions arise through coarse-graining, including:
Linearized regimes resembling quantum dynamics,
Effective relativistic matter equations,
Emergent geometric structures interpretable as spacetime metrics,
Gravitational behavior as an effective large-scale description.
4. To propose a quantitative, graded notion of informational self-maintenance (autopoiesis) applicable to subsystems within the same framework, with the goal of treating macroscopic autonomy as a physical, rather than purely biological or philosophical, property.
5. To clarify the structural assumptions required for each emergent description, distinguishing between results demonstrated explicitly in toy models and those identified as programmatic extensions.
Significance: This work is significant in that it addresses several long-standing conceptual tensions in fundamental physics within a single coherent framework.
Foundational unification: By treating spacetime, gravity, and quantum behavior as emergent phases of informational dynamics, the framework offers a common explanatory language for domains traditionally treated as ontologically separate.
Singularity avoidance without ad hoc modification: The introduction of bounded informational dynamics provides a natural mechanism for regulating divergences, offering a potential resolution to singularities in gravitational and cosmological contexts.
Reduction of ontological assumptions: The framework minimizes primitive structures by replacing assumed spacetime geometry with relational information, aligning with relational and structural realist perspectives while remaining mathematically explicit.
Integration of autonomy into physics: By proposing a way to quantify informational self-maintenance, the work connects fundamental physics to the study of complex, self-organizing systems, opening a path toward treating autonomy, agency, and persistence as emergent physical properties rather than exceptional phenomena.
Programmatic clarity: Rather than claiming full derivations of known theories, the work explicitly identifies which elements are constructed, which rely on stated assumptions, and which remain open problems. This transparency makes the framework a clear platform for further analytical, numerical, and conceptual development.
Taken together, these contributions position the framework not as a replacement for existing theories, but as a unifying pre-theoretical structure within which established physical descriptions can be understood as scale-dependent, coarse-grained limits of a more general informational dynamics.
Frequently Asked Questions:
What is RG Emergence?
RG Emergence is a research program that investigates whether spacetime, gravity, quantum behavior, and macroscopic autonomy can be understood as emergent phenomena arising from a deeper informational and relational substrate. Rather than beginning with space and time as fundamental ingredients, the framework explores whether these familiar structures appear only at certain scales through coarse-graining of more primitive informational dynamics.
What does “pre-geometric” mean?
Pre-geometric means that spacetime is not assumed to exist at the most fundamental level of description. In this framework, the underlying substrate consists of relational connections and informational states without distances, durations, or coordinates. Geometry and time are treated as emergent descriptions that become meaningful only when certain large-scale patterns stabilize.
What is the informational field Ψ?
The field Ψ is a mathematical object that assigns informational state values to nodes in a relational network. It does not live in space or time and does not directly represent matter or energy. Instead, Ψ encodes patterns of informational distinction and correlation, from which familiar physical quantities may arise when the system is viewed at an appropriate scale.
Is this claiming that “everything is information”?
The framework does not claim that reality is information in a vague or metaphorical sense. The more precise claim is that informational structure is treated as ontologically prior to spacetime. This does not imply that physics reduces to computation or that physical quantities are illusory, but rather that relational informational structure is taken as the most primitive describable layer from which physical descriptions emerge.
How does spacetime emerge in this framework?
Spacetime is proposed to emerge through coarse-graining of informational states and the identification of stable, large-scale correlations. Gradients in coarse-grained informational fields can be interpreted geometrically, giving rise to notions of distance, time, and curvature. The framework does not yet derive general relativity in full detail, but it identifies structural conditions under which a geometric description becomes natural and effective.
Is this a theory of quantum gravity?
RG Emergence is not a quantum gravity theory in the traditional sense. It does not attempt to quantize spacetime or gravity directly. Instead, it asks what must be true of a deeper substrate for both quantum mechanics and gravity to emerge as effective descriptions. Existing theories such as quantum field theory and general relativity are treated as emergent regimes rather than being replaced.
How does quantum mechanics appear?
In certain linearized and coarse-grained regimes, the dynamics of the informational field admit oscillatory modes, conserved quadratic quantities, and effective complex structures. Under specific assumptions, these features resemble Schrödinger-type dynamics. Wavefunctions are interpreted as informational modes, probabilities as measures of coarse-grained distinguishability, and decoherence as a loss of access to underlying correlations rather than a fundamental collapse process.
Does this framework explain dark matter?
The framework allows for the possibility that some gravitational effects attributed to dark matter may arise from unaccounted informational correlations rather than unseen particles. This does not rule out particle dark matter, but it suggests that effective mass-energy could emerge from coarse-grained informational structure and ignored degrees of freedom. This remains an open research question rather than a settled conclusion.
Is everything just waves or harmonics?
Wave-like behavior appears naturally in regimes where the dynamics can be linearized and oscillatory modes dominate. However, the underlying informational dynamics are nonlinear and bounded, and saturation effects prevent unlimited superposition. As a result, wave descriptions are effective languages rather than fundamental constituents, valid only in certain regimes.
How is this different from entropic gravity or holography?
RG Emergence shares motivations with entropic gravity, holographic duality, and tensor-network approaches in treating spacetime as emergent. However, it does not assume spacetime, entropy, or entanglement as fundamental. Instead, it treats informational dynamics themselves as primary, with geometry and thermodynamics appearing only after coarse-graining. The framework is therefore deeper in ontology but more cautious in its claims.
Does this framework say anything about consciousness?
Indirectly, the framework provides a physical context in which consciousness can be discussed. If physical systems are informationally structured and autonomy corresponds to self-maintaining informational loops, then conscious systems may be understood as highly integrated, self-referential informational patterns. The framework does not claim to solve the hard problem of consciousness, but it removes the need to treat mind as ontologically separate from physical reality.
Is this philosophy or physics?
It is intentionally both. The framework is mathematically formulated and physically motivated, but it is also explicit about its philosophical assumptions. It operates at the boundary between foundational physics, information theory, systems science, and philosophy of science, with the goal of clarifying how different levels of description relate to one another.
What has been demonstrated versus what is speculative?
The framework demonstrates bounded informational dynamics, well-posed toy models, explicit coarse-graining procedures, and the emergence of distinct dynamical regimes. The emergence of full spacetime geometry, Einstein gravity, and cosmological behavior is proposed rather than fully derived. This distinction is explicit and central to the program’s intellectual honesty.
Why does this matter?
Many of the deepest problems in physics, including quantum gravity, singularities, the nature of time, and the role of observers, may stem from assuming spacetime as fundamental. By relaxing that assumption, RG Emergence explores new ways of framing these problems and potentially resolving long-standing conceptual tensions.
Who is this for?
This work is intended for physicists interested in foundational questions, philosophers of science, researchers in complexity and systems theory, and anyone curious about how reality might be structured at its deepest level. It is designed to be rigorous without being dogmatic and open to interdisciplinary dialogue.
Is this framework finished?
No. RG Emergence is an ongoing research program rather than a completed theory. Its value lies in providing a coherent framework, clarifying assumptions, and offering a shared language for future work rather than presenting a final answer to foundational questions.