Time, Space & Information
Signals, light cones, and the causal structure of knowledge
Overview
Time, space, and information together define the causal structure of what can be known. Light cones set the boundary of information transfer across spacetime: no signal can travel faster than light, and this limit determines which events can inform which observers. The cosmic microwave background is a spatial map of temporal information, encoding the earliest moments of the universe across the present sky. This triad is the domain of signal theory, relativistic causality, and the holographic principle.
Central Tension
The tension lies between the spatial distribution of information and the temporal limits on its propagation. Relativity restricts information flow to the light cone, creating horizons beyond which information is forever inaccessible. Yet quantum entanglement correlates information across spatial separations instantaneously, apparently violating these limits without transmitting a signal. Whether spacetime constrains information or information generates spacetime is an open question at the frontier of physics.
Key Philosophical Questions
- Does the speed of light represent a fundamental limit on information transfer, or only on signal propagation?
- Is spacetime itself an emergent property of informational relationships, as some approaches to quantum gravity suggest?
- How does the holographic principle redefine the relationship between spatial volume and informational capacity?
- If information cannot travel faster than light, what does quantum entanglement tell us about the nature of spatial information?
Schools of Thought
All spatiotemporal information exists in the block universe; the light-cone structure is a constraint on access, not on existence.
Space and time are the computational grid, and information is the data flowing through it; the speed of light is a processing bandwidth limit.
Entanglement correlates information across spacetime in ways that defy classical locality; the quantum state carries information that transcends spatial and temporal separation.
Information is primary; spacetime is the emergent structure that information creates as it organizes itself into causal networks.
God's knowledge is not limited by light cones or spatial horizons; divine omniscience transcends the causal structure that constrains creaturely information access.
Synthesis
Time, space, and information together define the epistemic geometry of the universe: what can be known, when it can be known, and from where. The light cone is the fundamental informational boundary of spacetime, and the holographic principle suggests that this boundary is more fundamental than the volume it encloses.
Related Dimension Pairs