John Archibald Wheeler was loved and adored throughout physics — especially, naturally, in Princeton. After Wheeler retired he spent ten years in Texas, but returned to Princeton in 1986, and the university welcomed him back to his old office. From time to time his secretary would call and ask me — like others of his more junior colleagues — to join him for lunch. 
But I knew him well before then, because Wheeler acknowledged no division at all between physics and philosophy.
In the early seventies, the University of Western Ontario was the primus locus of philosophy of science in Canada. All the universities were expanding, one projection said that within ten years California alone would absorb the total output of Ph.Ds. With the exuberance of new funding UWO drew philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians to a fantastic series of colloquia and conferences.
So Wheeler came there in 1970 to Cliff Hooker’s conference on foundations of quantum mechanics. Wheeler’s colleague Eugene Wigner spoke, Wheeler did not. But Wheeler sat quietly taking many, many notes, in all the sessions, and wanted to talk and listen over lunches and coffee breaks. At one lunch, at another table, Cliff mentioned something Wheeler had said, and a neighbor, I think a physicist, turned to us and said those words, “A gentle, lucid spirit …”.
Wheeler’s lectures astonished, inspired, exhorted … I wondered often just how indulgent an audience could be. But then soon I’d see his new slogans repeated in the literature. The participatory universe, it from bit, the world as a self-excited circuit, displayed in provocative images that quickly became famous
The universe creating itself through observation
John Bell parodied Wheeler’s style (the negative-extravagant, “No analysis moved our understanding forward more than …”, “No other experience could …”) but did so affectionately — who wouldn’t love the master in those moments?
In the summer of 1977 Giuliano Toraldo di Francia organized the annual Enrico Fermi physics course in Varenna, on Lake Como. Jeff Bub, Marisa Dalla Chiara, and I were the only philosophers, properly daunted by the physics company: Jean-Marc Levy-Leblond, Ilya Prigogine (Nobel prize that year) , John Archibald Wheeler …. The course was held in an imposing venue, the Villa Monastero, angels and saints on lecture room ceilings, strolls by lake-side ….
When we arrived, gaping at this splendor, I exclaimed to Marisa ‘When I grow up I want to be Giuliano!’
I almost lost Wheeler’s favor, later on, and it was because of a story in his lecture there in Varenna. The background to have in mind is that Wheeler had been involved in the WWII Manhattan project. In those seventies’ peace march days, he had become a little wary about this. In one conversation I came across him pointing out how many soldiers’ lives had been saved by bombing Hiroshima. Evoked by someone’s ill-timed remark, I imagine.
Well, in that lecture in Varenna Wheeler told a story (one he would repeat often) to illustrate the participatory universe, which creates itself in response to our questions. Roughly it went like this:
“We had been playing the familiar game of twenty questions. Then my turn came, to be sent from the room, so the others could agree on a difficult word. When I was finally readmitted, I found a smile on everyone’s face — what was going on?. I nevertheless started my attempt to find the word. “Is it animal?” “No.” “Is it mineral?” “Yes.” “Is it green?” “No.” “Is it white?” “Yes.” These answers came quickly. Then the questions began to take longer in the answering. It was strange, the one queried would think and think, yes or no, no or yes, before responding. Finally I had only my twentieth question left. I guessed: “Is it cloud?” “Yes,” came the reply, and everyone burst out laughing. They explained to me there had been no pre-arranged word. Each one questioned could answer as he pleased — except only that he should have a word in mind compatible with all that had gone before.”
Is that what happens in nature when physics puts nature to the question?
Inspired by this in my own way, I wrote a story. The archangels Michael and Lucifer play with the course of nature, in response to scientists’ questions. Lucifer, female in that story, has her hidden designs; the story ends with “And in her mind’s eye she saw already, in the far future, in answer to a human question, little pieces of star burning fiercely, briefly on earth; first in the desert, then in a city”.
I gave Wheeler a copy at the Weyl conference in Kiel, a few years later. The next day he gave me a distinctly suspicious look. I made some disarming remarks, and he called the story “interesting” (hmm …). But then we were talking about Everett and the many worlds view (“what could get people more confused about quantum mechanics?”, he said), and we were fine. I suppose he gave me the benefit of the doubt.
————————————–
Notes. Wheeler’s 1977 lecture “Frontiers of Time” is online (not a very good copy), and there is a fond reminiscence of Wheeler in the Princeton alumni magazine (scroll down half-way). And there is my story.
Bas van Fraassen's Commonplace Book 