Leibniz, Information, Math and Physics

TL;DR

This paper explores Leibniz's early ideas on information theory and their influence on modern digital philosophy, proposing a unified view of mathematics and physics through an information-theoretic lens.

Contribution

It offers a personal account of the evolution of digital philosophy and its implications for understanding mathematics and physics as interconnected information-based disciplines.

Findings

Leibniz's ideas prefigure modern information theory.

Digital philosophy suggests a paradigm shift in sciences.

Mathematics and physics are fundamentally linked through information.

Abstract

The information-theoretic point of view proposed by Leibniz in 1686 and developed by algorithmic information theory (AIT) suggests that mathematics and physics are not that different. This will be a first-person account of some doubts and speculations about the nature of mathematics that I have entertained for the past three decades, and which have now been incorporated in a digital philosophy paradigm shift that is sweeping across the sciences.