Rechnender Raum (Calculating Space)

Rechnender Raum (Calculating Space) is the first work of digital physics, written by a pioneer of the programmable computer. Its central claim is that all processes in the universe are computational: physical reality is being computed by some form of discrete machinery rather than evolving through continuous laws.

The argument reasons by analogy and reduction, proposing the cellular automaton as a candidate substrate for the cosmos and suggesting that, just as chemistry reduces to physics, physics might reduce to theoretical computer science. It notes too that classical notions such as entropy growth sit awkwardly inside a deterministically computed world.

The work originated the universe-as-computation thesis, the foundational ancestor of digital physics, pancomputationalism, and the simulation hypothesis. It supplies the serious scientific root of the idea that reality is information being processed, later extended by others toward consciousness-and-simulation speculation.