From Geometry to Redundancy: A Reinterpretation of Symmetry After Noether

Albert Einstein's field equations revolutionized our understanding of gravity through the geometry of spacetime. Emmy Noether’s theorem, published shortly thereafter, revealed a profound connection between symmetries and conservation laws — one that has shaped modern physics ever since. However, this note proposes a conceptual shift. Rather than viewing symmetry through the lens of geometry or mathematical invariance alone, we interpret symmetry as a form of informational redundancy: the structured repetition that enables a system to preserve, correct, and reconstruct itself across time. We argue that the loss of such redundancy — i.e., symmetry breaking — is not merely a geometric or field-theoretic event, but a degradation of memory, and a source of entropy. This reorientation offers a powerful conceptual bridge between general relativity, thermodynamics, information theory, and quantum decoherence.