For more than a century, modern physics has been extraordinarily successful at describing nature. Quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and general relativity explain an enormous range of phenomena. Yet these theories begin by assuming the existence of concepts such as spacetime, particles, fields, quantum states, and physical laws. A deeper question remains largely unanswered: where do those structures come from in the first place?
The first paper of the Theory of Informational Selection (TSI) explores a possible answer. Instead of taking physical objects or spacetime as fundamental, it introduces a more primitive entity called the Informational Totality (IT). In this framework, reality is described initially as a complete network of correlations between abstract variables, without assuming geometry, time, particles, fields, or even physical systems.
The paper develops a rigorous mathematical foundation for this idea through three equivalent formulations: a correlational description, a variational principle based on the maximization of total correlation, and a functorial formulation inspired by category theory. Although mathematically different, all three formulations describe the same underlying informational structure and provide a representation-independent ontology.
From this informational foundation, increasingly familiar physical structures begin to emerge. Stable correlational patterns give rise to ontological partitions and effective degrees of freedom. Informational metrics generate geometry. Correlational order gives rise to an emergent notion of time. Physical dynamics appear as transitions between stable informational configurations. Within the broader TSI research program, quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and general relativity are not assumed from the outset but emerge as effective limits of deeper informational structures.
Why could such an approach be important? Many of the deepest problems in contemporary physics arise from attempting to reconcile frameworks built upon different ontological assumptions. The TSI proposes a common informational foundation from which spacetime, matter, dynamics, and even the mathematical structures used by modern physics may emerge. Whether ultimately successful or not, this approach seeks to move beyond the traditional search for new particles or new fields, addressing instead the more fundamental question of why any physical structure exists at all.
This paper represents the starting point of the TSI program and establishes the ontological and mathematical foundations upon which the subsequent papers on correlational structures, modular time, informational geometry, and emergent spacetime are built.
Informational Selection Theory (TSI): Zenodo community providing access to all publications and articles related to the theory.
Paper 1-TSI: The Informational Totality: Mathematical Foundations of the Theory of Informational Selection (TSI)
Pablo Reyes, IPI Member
