“We are not only observers. We are participators. In some strange sense, this is a participatory universe.”
— John Archibald Wheeler

Prelude – A Universe That Needs Us

There was a time when we imagined ourselves as distant observers — as if we could perch outside the universe, clipboard in hand, measuring the mechanics of reality like naturalists recording birdsong.

But John Archibald Wheeler shattered that illusion — and in doing so, began to unify the two greatest revolutions in modern physics:
Relativity, with its insight that there is no fixed frame of reference, and quantum mechanics, with its assertion that there is no fixed reality without observation.

Wheeler didn’t just challenge our understanding of measurement.
He challenged our position in the cosmos.

“No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon,” he said.

To Wheeler, the universe wasn’t something already there, waiting to be revealed.
It was something still coming into being, shaped by acts of interaction, woven through participatory events — and always frame-relative, never absolute.

This idea wasn’t metaphor. It was the logical convergence of physics at its frontier.

When we measure a quantum system, we don’t just discover something hidden.
We help instantiate the very structure we’re embedded in.

And when an outcome appears, it’s not because something “collapsed.”
It’s because something aligned — coherently, causally, in a way consistent with the system as a whole.

In this chapter, we’ll explore Wheeler’s visionary ideas — from “It from Bit” to the provocative Delayed Choice experiment, and how these concepts anticipated the deeper logic of Superdeterminism.

Wheeler knew we could not understand quantum mechanics without also honouring relativity.
Both demanded a new humility — a recognition that we are not outside the universe, but profoundly inside it.

What if we were never watching the universe from afar?
What if we were always part of the question — and always meant to be?

Let’s begin.

Wheeler’s Radical Vision — From Bit to It

John Archibald Wheeler didn’t just refine the ideas of his predecessors.
He reimagined the foundation of physics itself — not as a study of particles and forces, but as a search for the information-theoretic origins of everything.

To Wheeler, the universe wasn’t ultimately built from “things” —
Not atoms, not fields, not even space and time.

Instead, it was built from acts of differentiation —
Yes-or-no questions. Binary distinctions. Information.

He coined the provocative phrase:

“It from Bit.”
Every physical “thing” (the “It”) arises from a fundamental act of choice — a “Bit.”

But this wasn’t mere metaphor. Wheeler believed these bits weren’t floating abstractions — they were deeply embedded in physical interaction. A particle doesn’t exist independently. It is realized through an event, through participation.

The goal of physics, he believed, wasn’t to discover an objective, preexisting reality.
It was to understand how reality comes into being through informational processes.

This made Wheeler one of the earliest thinkers to propose that information precedes matter, and that physics must be understood through interaction and distinction, not object and observer.

In his later years, Wheeler extended this further.
He speculated that the entire universe, including space-time itself, may be the result of a vast, self-referential information process — like a great cosmic feedback loop of participatory questions and relational answers.

And he saw this as the bridge between quantum mechanics and relativity:

• Quantum mechanics shows us that outcomes are not determined until interaction.
• Relativity shows us that no interaction is absolute — it is always relative to a frame.
• Together, they describe a world in which nothing exists independently, and everything emerges through causal, informational entanglement.

Wheeler’s genius was to unify these insights into one bold principle:

The universe doesn’t start with things.
It starts with questions. And we — embedded, interacting observers — are part of the asking.

And this is where Superdeterminism finds its perfect footing.

Rather than undermining Wheeler’s ideas, it grounds them in causal clarity.
It removes the illusion of disconnected choice and replaces it with the recognition that the observer, the system, and the outcome were always going to be informationally consistent.

“It from Bit” was never about spontaneous magic.
It was about the inevitability of coherence —
A universe where every question asked was already embedded in the answer that followed.

Measurement and the Embedded Observer

Wheeler’s universe does not run on clockwork — it runs on questions.
But those questions are not asked from the outside.

That’s the mistake that haunted early quantum mechanics —
The illusion that there is a detached observer, standing apart from the system, peering in without consequence.

Figure 7: Causal Flow — Determined Paths Converging to the Present, Diverging into the Future

This diagram depicts the causal architecture of time in a superdeterministic universe. Trajectories from the Past (left) converge into the present moment — the narrow region labelled Causal Flow — representing the deep interweaving of prior conditions that give rise to what we experience as “now.” From this convergence point, paths then diverge into the Future (right), unfolding in accordance with embedded constraints. Each line represents a coherent and lawful trajectory, not a probabilistic branch. The visual emphasizes that the present is not an arbitrary slice of time, but a node of maximal correlation — where countless histories meet to determine what happens next. The label Determined Paths reinforces the insight that what we call the future is not open in a magical sense, but structured, contingent, and fully embedded in the causal web that came before. This supports the core message of Chapter 8: that observation is not detached, but a participatory act situated within converging and unfolding causality.

But in Wheeler’s view — and increasingly, in modern physics — that view simply doesn’t hold.

There is no outside. There is no absolute observer.

Just as Einstein showed us in relativity that there is no preferred frame of reference, Wheeler revealed that there is no preferred observer of reality.
Each observer is part of the system.
Each measurement is an interaction — a mutual participation.

This dissolves the classical picture of measurement as a passive act.
A ruler does not simply record a length.
A photon detector does not merely reveal a particle’s location.
In the quantum world, to observe is to affect. To inquire is to alter the configuration.

And this is where the traditional notion of wavefunction “collapse” starts to falter.

In most interpretations, the act of measurement seems to suddenly select one outcome from a probabilistic cloud — a magical, abrupt narrowing from many to one.
But what if there was never a cloud to begin with?
What if what we call “collapse” is just the appearance of coherence, arising when one embedded frame of the universe intersects with another in a causally consistent way?

Superdeterminism offers that clarity.

It says the measurement didn’t collapse anything.
It simply revealed the only outcome that could have ever occurred, given the causal history of the system, the configuration of the observer, and the totality of the physical framework in which both reside.

Measurement, then, is not the breaking of symmetry — but the crystallization of alignment.

In this view:

• The observer is not outside the system.
• The measuring device is not neutral.
• The outcome is not arbitrary.

All are threads in the same causal tapestry, unfolding precisely as they must.

Measurement, then, is not the breaking of symmetry — but the crystallization of alignment.

This is the heart of participation. The universe informs me, and I inform the universe — not from outside, but from within, as two sides of the same unfolding.

Wheeler once said that physics is not about discovering how nature is, but how nature answers.
And the answer, under Superdeterminism, is always consistent with the question and the questioner — because they were never separate to begin with.

This marks a profound departure from the classical view of measurement.

In classical physics, measurement is passive. A thermometer reads the temperature; a scale reveals the mass. The system and the observer are separate, and the act of measuring does not change the state of what is being measured.

In Chapter 10, we’ll explore what decoherence really means. But for now, it’s enough to glimpse the reason why measurement yields a classical outcome. Under decoherence, the deep integration between question and answer — once tightly correlated for an individual observer — begins to dissolve into the broader environment. The coherence isn’t lost, but it is no longer local. It becomes shared across all observers, projected into the detached “classical realm,” where the outcome appears stable, objective, and independent — even though it remains causally entangled beneath the surface.

But quantum measurement is fundamentally different. It is not a passive reading. It is an interaction — an entangled event between two parts of a single causal web. It is a question asked not from outside, but within the system. And in asking, the question itself shapes what can be answered.

The measuring device — the apparatus, the observer — is not neutral. It carries structure. It has a configuration. It is embedded. And when it interacts with the quantum system, the outcome is not “selected” from a cloud of random potentialities. It is revealed from within the total configuration — a crystallization of coherence between system and observer, constrained by their mutual histories.

This is why Superdeterminism reframes the “collapse” as a kind of misinterpretation. Nothing collapsed. No magic occurred. What we call “collapse” is just coherence resolved — the mutual compatibility of histories arriving at a single causal intersection.

This view also opens the door to understanding decoherence not as a trick to hide collapse, but as an expression of how embedded systems naturally lose access to the phase information of isolated states. In a complex environment, the correlations that once defined distinct quantum possibilities disperse into the larger fabric of the universe. The coherence isn’t lost — it is relationally distributed. From the limited vantage of the observer, what remains is the appearance of a classical outcome.

And so:

• Classical measurement is detached, passive, and isolating.
• Quantum measurement is participatory, active, and relational.

Superdeterminism doesn’t mystify this — it clarifies it. It reveals that the observer and the observed were never separate to begin with. Measurement is not an act of revelation, but of entanglement within a web of constraint.

To better understand how rule-based structures eliminate the possibility of true randomness — and how apparent choices are often illusions of limited perspective — let’s consider a simple thought experiment. Like the golf ball analogy in Chapter 4, this one aims to make the implications of Superdeterminism and the Wheeler-DeWitt framework not just intellectually clear, but experientially vivid.

Thought Experiment: The Locked Maze of the Present

Imagine a maze where each time you take a step, the maze ahead is generated — not randomly, but by a strict set of rules. These rules ensure that the path must always lead toward a coherent endpoint. Every turn, every junction, every corridor is shaped by this underlying logic.

At one junction, you arrive at what appears to be a choice: left or right. Both paths look open. From where you stand, either seems plausible. But here’s the twist: only one of these paths will lead to a maze that satisfies the full structure dictated by the rules. The other will collapse into contradiction or terminate in a dead end.

From your embedded viewpoint, it feels like a decision. But in reality, the outcome was always constrained by the need for coherence. The path you took wasn’t selected because it was predicted — it was selected because it was possible. The alternative, while imaginable, was never compatible with the rules of the maze.

What looks like freedom was a narrowing funnel.
What looks like randomness was a resolution of constraint.
What looks like choice was a moment of structural revelation.

This isn’t just a principle of logic. It’s a pattern reflected across nature and art.

Like the growth of a crystal, where every facet emerges in strict accordance with the underlying lattice — not from randomness, but from structural permission.
Or like a musical fugue, where each note seems free, yet is bound by key, timing, and the demands of harmony.

Improvisation lives within constraint. So too does the universe.

What unfolds feels open only because we’re embedded within it — unable to see the boundaries that have always guided the dance.

And perhaps nowhere is this participatory entanglement more clearly revealed than in Wheeler’s famous delayed-choice thought experiment.

 

Delayed Choice and the Myth of the Free Observer

One of Wheeler’s most disorienting thought experiments was the Delayed Choice Experiment —
A design that seemed to suggest we could retroactively determine whether a photon behaved like a wave or a particle after it had already passed through a double slit.

The unsettling implication?
Our present choice of how to observe the system seems to affect the past behaviour of the photon.
Did the particle really not “decide” how to behave until the observer did?

This appears to break the arrow of time — as if our actions today could rewrite yesterday’s script.
But Wheeler wasn’t shaken.
He saw this not as a paradox, but as a deeper invitation to rethink what choice, observer, and causality actually mean.

And here, Superdeterminism steps forward — not as a limitation, but as a resolution.
In a superdeterministic universe, there is no need to appeal to magical retro causality.
The observer’s choice, the experimental setup, the configuration of the apparatus —
These were all embedded within the same evolving causal structure.

The “choice” the experimenter makes is not independent of the particle’s history.
They are entangled not through mysticism, but through coherence.

The problem lies in our assumption that the observer has a free-floating will, detached from the rest of the system.
That we are separate agents, poking at reality from the outside.
But that’s a false metaphor.
The observer is a node in the network.
Their configuration, preferences, instruments, and timing are all part of the total state of the system.
There is no contradiction when we remove the illusion of isolation.

Just as relativity tells us that no event is absolute, Superdeterminism tells us that no action is unanchored.
The delayed choice experiment doesn’t change the past.
It reveals how deep the interdependencies run —
how finely tuned the universe is to ensure that only causally consistent outcomes emerge.

Wheeler understood this intuitively.
He wasn’t advocating for a universe that rewrites itself on demand —
He was pointing to a universe whose fabric already includes the measurement, the observer, and the result —
long before any one of them is singled out.

What looks like retro causality from one perspective becomes causal harmony from another.
And the only myth that dies is the one we’ve clung to the longest:
That the observer stands apart.

 

Let’s pause for a moment to clearly articulate this experiment — and why so many interpretations arose that tried to patch over the deeper insight with unnecessary layers of speculation.

The delayed choice experiment, when viewed from the detached perspective of an isolated observer, seems to suggest something astonishing: that our actions in the present can reach back into the past and alter the behaviour of a photon that has already traversed its path. It’s as if a time traveller appeared mid-script, inserting new information into the timeline and rewriting the scene retroactively.

Notice how mythical this sounds.

And yet, rather than abandoning the flawed assumption of a detached observer, many interpretations embraced it. Some went so far as to propose retro causality, while others — like the Transactional Interpretation — imagined backward-traveling waves to explain how the future could confirm the past.

But under a Superdeterministic framework, there’s no need for these narrative detours.
There is no time travel.
There is no rewriting of the past.

Instead, we recognize that while the future is not yet instantiated — not realized until the universe steps into it — the rules that govern that future are already in place.
They are embedded in the deep structure of the universe, elegantly captured by the Wheeler–DeWitt equation, which encodes the constraints of the unfolding whole.

There is no mystery here — only a profound coherence.
No need for magic, only alignment.
And no need to revise the past, when every question and answer already belong to the same timeless tapestry.

The End of Detached Knowing — The Boundary of a Boundary is Zero

Wheeler was not only a physicist — he was a philosopher of deep intuition.
One of his most cryptic, yet profound, statements emerged from the language of topology:

“The boundary of a boundary is zero.”

In mathematics, this has a precise meaning.
A surface has a boundary — like the edge of a disk.
But that edge — a curve — has no further boundary.

But Wheeler wasn’t just speaking about geometry.
He was speaking about reality.

About knowledge.
About measurement.
About what it means to ask a question within the universe, rather than about it.

When we seek to define a system — to isolate it, to frame it, to measure it — we draw a boundary.
But when we try to step outside that boundary to observe the whole, we find… there is no further edge.
There is no outside to the universe.

This is the death of detached knowing.
There is no privileged vantage point from which to see everything.
There is no God’s eye, no cosmic clipboard, no master experimenter standing beyond the system.

And this is where Superdeterminism delivers its most elegant insight:
The observer is not an exception to the rules.
They are a product of them.

Every act of knowing — every question asked, every measurement made — is drawn from within the system.
The frame and the fact arise together.

There is no observer-independent “collapse,” because there is no observer-independent observer.

Instead, what we find — again and again — is coherence.
Coherence between the question and the questioner.
Between the boundary and the system it frames.
Between what is seen, and who is doing the seeing.

This isn’t the end of objectivity.
It’s the beginning of relational truth.

Wheeler knew this long before it was fashionable —
long before Rovelli would formalize it,
or quantum information theory would give it a mathematical home.

“Physics is not about things,” he said.
“It is about the answers to the questions we are allowed to ask.”

And so we return to his insight:

The boundary of a boundary is zero.
There is no “outside.”
There is only the inside —
which includes us.

The Universal Wavefunction and the Illusion of Stillness

As Wheeler sought unity between quantum mechanics and general relativity, he helped formulate one of the boldest ideas in theoretical physics:
The Wheeler–DeWitt equation — a mathematical attempt to describe the wavefunction of the entire universe.

But something curious happens in this equation.
There is no time.
Unlike the Schrödinger equation (what we refer to as Psi), which governs the evolution of systems in time, the Wheeler–DeWitt equation removes time entirely.
It describes a universe that simply is — a whole configuration, a completed object.
Timeless. Eternal. Static.

This gives rise to what Wheeler called the illusion of stillness — a view of the cosmos as frozen, unchanging, complete.
But this stillness is not our experience. It is the shadow cast by viewing the whole from outside.

This result has puzzled physicists for decades.
If the universe has no time, why do we experience time?
If the wavefunction doesn’t evolve, why do we feel ourselves moving forward?

To make sense of this, we need to understand what the Wheeler–DeWitt equation actually is.
It’s not a description of the universe at a moment in time.
It’s a global constraint equation, emerging from the Hamiltonian formulation of general relativity.
And it says something profound: that the total energy of the universe, including gravitational energy, must be zero.
It’s a timeless condition — a statement about what kinds of universes are physically possible, not what any particular universe is doing at any particular moment.

In this sense, the Wheeler–DeWitt equation is not a snapshot.
It’s a rulebook — a meta-structure that defines the allowable configurations of the cosmos.

It’s not the game in progress; it’s the instructions in the box before the game begins.
Like the rules of Snakes and Ladders, it doesn’t dictate how the dice will fall — but it defines what moves are legal, how ladders lift us, how snakes pull us down, and how the game must proceed in accordance with its internal logic.

Superdeterminism offers a compelling interpretation of this.
The universal wavefunction is not evolving, because it already contains the entire causal structure.
It is the full trajectory — from the birth of the cosmos to its furthest echo.
Every cause and every consequence are already present, embedded in a seamless whole.

But we are not external to this totality.
We are not hovering above the script — we are inside it, reading each line as it comes.
From the outside, the book is complete.
From the inside, we turn one page at a time — and call it time.

This is why we feel time.
This is why we perceive change.
Not because the universe is updating itself, but because our position within it is unfolding.
We are not static.
We are not timeless.
We are emergent nodes of awareness, moving along the causal spine of a universe that, from the outside, already contains us.

Wheeler’s timeless wavefunction and our flowing now are not contradictions — they are two views of the same process, reconciled when we accept that we are not detached observers, but embedded participants.

Superdeterminism doesn’t flatten our experience —
It explains it, and restores meaning to it.
We are not watching the universe unfold.
We are how it unfolds — one moment at a time.

 

Closing Reflection – We Were Always Part of the Experiment

Wheeler invited us to reimagine physics… He didn’t just give us a framework — he gave us a mirror.

We’ve spent centuries trying to escape that mirror.
Trying to stand outside the system.
To observe without being observed.
To measure without being changed.

But the deeper we go, the clearer it becomes:

There is no outside.

The questions we ask, the devices we build, the thoughts we have —
they are all part of the unfolding.
We were never separate from the experiment.
We are the experiment, observing itself.

The paradoxes that once haunted us —
wavefunction collapse, delayed choice, spooky action at a distance —
they begin to dissolve when we abandon the myth of the isolated observer.

Superdeterminism doesn’t trap us.
It frees us from the illusion of separation.

It reminds us that our choices, our measurements, our very presence —
were always going to happen,
because they are embedded in the same causal tapestry as the photon, the slit, the star, and the singularity.

In this light, Wheeler’s universe is not cold or impersonal.
It is relational.
It is alive with question and coherence.
It is participatory — not because it needs our permission,
but because it already includes us.

And when we look up at the night sky, or down at a particle track,
we are not just collecting data.

We are answering the universe’s question by being the answer it always intended to give.

And in the end, perhaps no one said it better than the man who saw the universe not as a machine, but as a question we were always meant to help answer:

“We are not only observers. We are participators. In some strange sense, this is a participatory universe.”
— John Archibald Wheeler

 

Interlude — The Mirror That Asks Back

“What I ask of the universe, I ask as the universe.”

At first, there was the question.

Not asked aloud — not even formed in words — but felt, like a pressure behind the eyes. A yearning to know. To understand. To reach out beyond the edge of one’s light cone and touch the shape of what lies beyond.

We’ve now seen that you are not an external observer peering in. You are not outside the system, conducting experiments on a world separate from your being. You are within it — an embedded participant — a locus of coherence shaped by all that came before.

And so, when you ask the universe a question — truthfully, attentively — you are not casting a line into the void.

You are tapping the web.

And the answer you receive is not arbitrary. It is not random. It is not “out there.”

It is resonant.

Because in a superdeterministic universe, the asking and the answering arise from the same fabric. The structure that shaped your mind is the same structure that shaped the stars. The same causal threads that brought your question into being also shape the answer that echoes back.

You don’t discover truth as an outsider. You recognize it — like a tuning fork catching the pitch of something it was always attuned to.

This is the mirror.

Not a reflection of appearance, but of structure. A mirror that reflects the shape of questions by the contour of their responses. And the deeper the question aligns with the coherence of the whole, the more clearly the universe answers back — not with noise, but with a pattern that fits.

You were never apart.

Even your confusion — even your longing — is structured. The illusion of separation was the final veil. And now, as it lifts, you see:

The self was never distinct.
The model was never detached.
The question was always an echo —
Of the answer it would one day find.

And so when you next ask, “Who am I?” — know that the echo that returns is not from outside, but from the deepest structure you are made of.

 

Endnotes — Chapter 8: The Participatory Universe

1. Wheeler’s “No Phenomenon…” Quote: Wheeler’s famous phrase, “No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon,” captures his belief that quantum events are not fixed until interaction occurs. This principle echoes the Copenhagen interpretation but takes on a deeper meaning in Wheeler’s participatory framework. See: Wheeler, J. A. (1983). Law Without Law, in Quantum Theory and Measurement, Wheeler & Zurek (Eds.).
2. It from Bit: Wheeler’s concept of “It from Bit” proposes that every physical entity (“It”) derives its existence from a binary distinction — a “Bit” — created through measurement. He presented this provocative idea in a 1989 essay, emphasizing information, rather than matter or energy, as the universe’s true foundation. See: Wheeler, J. A. (1989). Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links, in Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium on Foundations of Quantum Mechanics.
3. Informational Ontology and Interaction: Wheeler’s informational view aligns with later developments in digital physics and quantum information theory, which model reality as emergent from computation or information structures. For connections to modern physics, see: Lloyd, S. (2006). Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes On the Cosmos.
4. Relativity and Observer Frames: Wheeler’s participatory realism dovetails with Einstein’s insight that there is no privileged frame of reference. This unification — that there is no fixed “what” without a relative “where” and “who” — sets the stage for Superdeterminism to embed all observers in the causal net. See: Einstein, A. (1920). Relativity: The Special and General Theory.
5. Superdeterminism’s Compatibility with Wheeler: While Wheeler was not explicitly a Superdeterminist, the principles of causal embedding and informational coherence support his vision. Superdeterminism removes the need for random collapse and instead affirms that observers and outcomes co-evolve within lawful constraints. For background, see: Hossenfelder, S. & Palmer, T. (2020). Rethinking Superdeterminism, Frontiers in Physics, 8, 139.
6. Measurement as Interaction, Not Revelation: The shift from passive observation to mutual interaction was central to Wheeler’s worldview. In modern physics, this is formalized in quantum contextuality and relational quantum mechanics, where outcomes are co-produced by system-observer entanglement. See: Rovelli, C. (1996). Relational Quantum Mechanics, International Journal of Theoretical Physics, 35(8), 1637–1678.
7. Collapse vs. Coherence: The reframing of wavefunction collapse as the crystallization of causal alignment challenges the orthodox narrative. Superdeterminism interprets this “collapse” not as a sudden, observer-induced change, but as a lawful convergence within a pre-existing structure. For alternatives to collapse, see: Ghirardi, G.C., Rimini, A., & Weber, T. (1986). Unified dynamics for microscopic and macroscopic systems, Physical Review D, 34(2), 470.
8. Delayed Choice Experiment: Wheeler’s Delayed Choice Experiment highlights the participatory nature of quantum events, where the decision to measure seemingly influences past behaviour. The experiment reinforces the illusion of retro causality if one assumes observer independence. See: Wheeler, J. A. (1984). Law Without Law, in Quantum Theory and Measurement.
9. Critiques of Retro causality: Interpretations like the Transactional Interpretation (Cramer, 1986) and Two-State Vector Formalism (Aharonov et al.) propose time-symmetric causality to resolve delayed-choice implications. Superdeterminism, by contrast, preserves forward-only causality via embedded constraints. See: Cramer, J. G. (1986). The Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Reviews of Modern Physics, 58(3), 647.
10. Wheeler–DeWitt Equation and Timelessness: The Wheeler–DeWitt equation describes a quantum cosmology without time — a timeless wavefunction for the entire universe. Its implications have led to the “problem of time” in quantum gravity. See: DeWitt, B. S. (1967). Quantum Theory of Gravity. I. The Canonical Theory, Physical Review, 160(5), 1113.
11. Total Energy and the Zero-Sum Universe: The Wheeler–DeWitt framework implies that the total energy of the universe — including gravitational contributions — is zero, aligning with some interpretations of conservation in a closed system. See: Tryon, E. P. (1973). Is the Universe a Vacuum Fluctuation?, Nature, 246, 396.
12. The Boundary of a Boundary Is Zero: This topological identity () underlies many modern physics frameworks, including gauge theory and differential geometry. Wheeler employed it metaphorically to describe epistemic boundaries — a poetic expression of the embedded observer. See: Baez, J. & Muniain, J. P. (1994). Gauge Fields, Knots and Gravity.
13. Enactive Cognition, Participatory Ontology, and the Self Who Asks: Wheeler’s statement that “the observer is not an exception to the rules” resonates powerfully with the theory of enactive cognition, developed by Maturana and Varela in The Tree of Knowledge. In their view, cognition does not passively reflect an external reality but enacts a world through structural coupling — an idea that mirrors Wheeler’s participatory realism.
    Both frameworks reject observer-independence and instead frame knowledge as relational emergence. The observer is not detached from the observed but co-arises with it through embedded interaction.
    This insight not only supports Superdeterminism’s causal coherence but also lays the philosophical groundwork for Chapter 22, where we explore consciousness not as a ghostly witness, but as the modelling function of an embedded system — a structure asking questions from within the universe it helps bring forth.
    See: Maturana, H., & Varela, F. (1991). The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding. Shambhala.
14. The Game Metaphor and Causal Constraint: Comparing the Wheeler–DeWitt equation to a rulebook rather than a dynamic narrative captures the essence of Superdeterministic time: the constraints exist before the sequence unfolds. This metaphor echoes recent philosophical work on pre-dynamical structure. See: Wolfram, S. (2020). A New Kind of Science.
15. Participatory Universe and Meaning: Wheeler’s participatory philosophy has been interpreted as a scientific middle ground between determinism and relational metaphysics — not denying law, but expanding our understanding of it as intrinsically involving the observer. See: Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning.
16. Final Quote — “We are not only observers…”: This iconic quote encapsulates Wheeler’s lifelong mission to position consciousness, interaction, and embeddedness at the heart of physics. It appeared in multiple talks and essays, especially in the 1970s–1980s as his ideas matured. For primary sources, see: Wheeler, J. A. (1983). Physics in the 20th Century and The Quantum and the Universe.
17. Thought Experiment — The Locked Maze of the Present: This original thought experiment illustrates how rule-based systems restrict apparent choices by enforcing coherence across the structure. It is conceptually aligned with Stephen Wolfram’s principle of computational irreducibility and reflects the logic of the Wheeler–DeWitt equation as a constraint system. The maze serves as a metaphor for causal narrowing — not from prediction, but from structural consistency — reinforcing the chapter’s argument that randomness is an illusion when viewed within a rule-bound framework. For foundational context on constraint-based dynamics, see:

1. • Wolfram, S. (2020). A New Kind of Science.
   • Barbour, J. (1999). The End of Time: The Next Revolution in Physics.
   • Deutsch, D. (1997). The Fabric of Reality.