THOLONIA 8.0.18

We’re going to introduce a new concept here; coherence. Most readers will already have an idea of what that means, but like so many words, it can mean different things in different contexts, so let’s be clear on how it will be used here.

“Coherent” can mean logically connected, consistent, a natural connection between parts, and generally convey the idea of parts that contribute to the whole, i.e., partons. This is a fundamental concept of the thologram, with its tholons and partons. In physics, coherent has a very specific, measurable definition.

Incoherent light is light of every possible wavelength (given the context of the source, such as the Sun or a bulb) that travels in every direction it can travel. This is the common form of light we see and use every day. Incoherence is the most fundamental quality of energy, as energy’s nature is to expand in every way and in every direction it can. Using the word incoherent to describe the creative and expansive nature of energy is unfortunate as incoherence is synonymous with senseless, disorganized, and meaningless, which could not be further from the truth when it comes to the most efficient distribution of energy in the universe.

Coherent light is when all the waves are of the same wavelength, oscillating in harmony, and all moving in the same direction. Like most things in our space-time reality, there are 2 kinds of coherence; time and space. Spacial coherence is when light of any wavelength is traveling in the same direction. Temporal coherence is when all the light is only one wavelength but can be traveling in any direction.

Natural sources like the Sun and stars emit light with very low temporal coherence (on the order of femtoseconds) due to their broad thermal spectrum. However, they can exhibit spatial coherence when viewed from great distances because they appear as nearly point-like sources, which is why stellar interferometry works. True natural sources of coherent light do exist in space in the form of astrophysical masers and megamasers, where stimulated emission in molecular clouds produces narrow-band, coherent microwave radiation, much like natural lasers. These natural coherent sources demonstrate that coherence can emerge from nature under specific conditions, making laser light less of an anomaly and more of an extreme example of a natural phenomenon.

In practical terms, there can’t actually be a single wavelength of light because wavelength, as a measure, is analog. We can say the wavelength is 555 nm (nanometers), but that still leaves an infinite number of possible wavelengths between 555.0 nm and 555.99999999 nm. Nor can two photons travel the exact same path, so there is no such thing as perfect coherence, only perfect incoherence.

This relationship between coherence and incoherence mirrors the nature of entropy itself: perfect disorder (maximum entropy, perfect incoherence) is the natural state that systems tend toward, while perfect order (zero entropy, perfect coherence) remains an unattainable ideal that we can only approach through the application of constraints and energy. In tholonic terms, incoherence represents the expansive nature of Contribution (high entropy, energy dispersed in all possible ways), while coherence represents the constraining nature of Definition (low entropy, energy channeled into specific patterns). Just as a laser creates coherence by imposing constraints through mirrors and selective wavelengths, all forms of order in the Universe emerge through the balance between these two fundamental forces.

This coherence-entropy relationship reveals a profound distinction between material and conceptual realms. In the material world, coherence must be forcibly created and maintained through constraints and energy input. Light naturally disperses into incoherence, and order decays into disorder. But in the conceptual realm, the direction reverses: ideas, formulas, and understanding naturally evolve toward greater coherence and interconnection over time. Scientific theories become more elegant and unified, mathematical expressions simplify yet explain more, and knowledge crystallizes into increasingly coherent frameworks. The conceptual realm naturally moves from chaos toward order (decreasing entropy, increasing coherence), while the material realm naturally moves from order toward chaos (increasing entropy, decreasing coherence). The laser, then, is a material instance that briefly mirrors the conceptual realm’s natural tendency. It represents a forced crystallization of order in a world that naturally disperses.

These two opposing entropy flows must meet at a point, and that point is the moment of instantiation itself, the boundary where concept becomes form, where archetype manifests as instance. This interface represents the highest point of coherence in the entire system, the singular moment where the tholonic realm’s journey toward maximum order intersects with the material realm’s journey toward maximum disorder. A concept, having achieved a state of refined coherence and low entropy in the tholonic realm, crosses this threshold into material instantiation. At the precise moment of crossing, coherence peaks. The concept is maximally defined, maximally ordered, maximally coherent. But the instant it enters material reality, it begins the inevitable entropic journey in the opposite direction, dispersing, decaying, losing coherence as the material realm’s laws take hold. The two realms do not overlap; they meet at a point of coherence. This explains why archetypes remain eternal and unchanging in the conceptual realm, while their material instances are temporary and entropic. The interface itself, this coherence singularity, might be understood as the white dot of the tholon, the point of instantiated power where potential (tholonic coherence) transforms into manifestation (material form), and where the arrow of entropy reverses direction.

To illustrate the scale of coherence: the most coherent beam sent out from our best lasers is 4 miles wide by the time it hits the moon. According to theory, the least divergence we can ever expect to see is 0.000038°.

How is light made more coherent? In the case of a laser, there is a mirror at each end of a gas-filled tube. The gas is zapped with energy, exciting the atoms and causing them to emit photons. Due to the properties of the gas, these photons are of a specific wavelength only. This is the temporal coherence part of a laser. These photons do what photons naturally do and travel to where they can travel, which is pretty limited given they are stuck in a tube.

Some of the photons are lucky enough to hit the mirror, bouncing them to the other mirror, which then causes the photons to bounce back and forth forever between them. As these photons bounce back and forth, they also stimulate other atoms to emit photons that travel in the same direction. This is called the avalanche effect, and, as the name implies, soon, all the photons are bouncing back and forth along 1 dimension in both directions, which creates spatial coherence.

It is the interference created by these opposing directions that causes a standing wave pattern to form, just like the interference in sounds waves across a 2D surface causes some part of the surface to stay still (where the sand ends up) and other parts to vibrate a lot (where the sand bounces off). Think of the photons as grains of sand, the energy pumped into the tube as vibrations of sound, and the pattern created in the tube as the result of the speed of light and the distance between the two mirrors. One of the mirrors is only 98% reflective, and one is 100%, so the light that comes out of the laser is the 2% that is allowed to escape.

In short, the way to make energy more coherent is to create a sustainable pattern that conserves energy, and soon all the energy will be traveling that path of least resistance. The reality we know, with planets, atoms, and laws, is such a multidimensional standing wave pattern. Primal Awareness & Intention is instantiated as the expansion of incoherent energy. Our material Universe is the result of the patterns caused by the various resonances, or “coherences”, of various forms and frequencies of that energy.

If frequency = (speed of light)/(wavelength), and mass (material reality) = energy/c² where c² represents the space-time metric, both of which are well-established in physics, then by the same reasoning, instantiations = (Awareness & Intention)/context. In the tholonic model, energy itself is understood as an instance of Awareness & Intention, while context represents the limitations imposed on that instance, whether those limitations are spatial, temporal, or dimensional. Instantiations can be either material (such as matter and energy in space-time) or conceptual (such as ideas and patterns in the tholonic realm). The question then becomes: can this relationship be tested, and if so, how?

Consciousness

Suppose the concept of a thing and the thing itself are two orders of the same form of expression of energy, and order is a prerequisite to intelligence. Does this imply that everything with order potentially has a form of intelligence? In the tholonic model, yes, but more than that, even without the coherence of order or intelligence, there is the incoherence of A&I.

Note: More accurately, what we are calling “intelligence” should be called “coherent intelligence” or “low-entropy intelligence”, as intelligence is innate to existence, which includes the chaos that order emerges from and returns to. We can think of that chaotic incoherent intelligence as “high-entropy intelligence”, but for simplicity and clarity, when we refer to “intelligence,” we are referring to coherent, low-entropy intelligence.

Key 67: Consciousness is a coherent form of A&I.

The fact that we tend to understand consciousness through our human perspective prevents us from seeing it as an attribute of existence. Humans may ask, “When did consciousness arise?” but from the tholonic perspective, consciousness is a limited instance of unlimited A&I. Since all matter and forms of energy are A&I, as explained earlier, then all limited instances of energy must be a form of consciousness.

Everything has consciousness because everything is an instance of Awareness & Intention limited by the context of its instance. The main difference between primal A&I and consciousness is coherence. A&I is incoherent, like the light of the sun, radiating in all frequencies in all directions. Consciousness, being a limited instance of A&I, is naturally more coherent. This makes even the smallest form of matter “conscious” to some degree, as it is coherent enough to be sustainable.

However, the potential for A&I to emerge in simple systems is limited by the number of available microstates. As instances become more complex (which they naturally will because energy always seeks to move through systems), more microstates become available, allowing more emergent expressions of A&I. This complexity increases naturally: quarks form subatomic particles, which form atoms, which form molecules, which form organic compounds, which form life. Each level provides more microstates for energy distribution and balance.

Hence, the consciousness that can emerge from the most complex system we know of in the universe, the human, is significantly more sophisticated, encompassing, and creative than the consciousness of simpler systems like a rock or a chair. This is not because humans have created consciousness, but because the universal attribute of A&I is more fully expressed when there are more microstates available.

Key 68: Matter and consciousness is an instance of A&I in a limited context.

Understanding the difference between consciousness and awareness can be tricky because many languages do not even have different words for these two concepts. For our purposes, we define awareness as a property of existence and consciousness as that same property when expressed through an instantiation, which is a definition or limitation, such as a person or a thing. It is similar to the difference between “dotness” and “a dot” or “movement” and “1968 Chevy Impala”. In a broader sense, it is more practical to think of A&I not as personal attributes that an individual develops or has but as a universal attribute that an individual expresses. In this way, these attributes are more like gravity: more apparent when there is more mass, not because the mass creates gravity.

So, does a chair have consciousness? Tholonically, yes, but with an important caveat. Consider the evolutionary path of the “chair” concept itself over thousands of years: from a rock used as a seat, to a simple stool, to increasingly sophisticated designs requiring tremendous structure, organization, and order to exist. We can say that as a chair, the rock has evolved to a much higher form of consciousness, expressing A&I through more complex microstates and relationships.

A modern chair is composed of billions of atoms, each containing tremendous energy holding nuclei together. As a holon, the chair provides additional microstates for its partons (wood, metal, springs, screws), and as a parton itself, it provides microstates for its parent holons (house, office, manufacturer). In less material realms, “chair” has profound effects on patterns related to ergonomics, aesthetics, social dynamics, and economics. The chair’s “consciousness” expresses through energy distribution. This happens in the comfort it provides (low resistance, high entropy), and in the tremendous distribution of energy via designers, engineers, and a 14-billion-dollar-a-year industry.

However, it’s not until we reach the level of human complexity that the emergent quality of self-awareness becomes apparent. Self-awareness requires not just consciousness (coherent A&I) but sufficient complexity and microstates for the system to model itself within itself. This is the distinction between the consciousness of a chair and the consciousness of a human.

Looking at the evolutionary phases above (Energy → Atoms (380K yrs) → Molecules (10B yrs) → Organics/Life (14B yrs) → Technology (?)), we can see how each phase represents a more complex order of energy built upon the orders that preceded it. Life has more microstates than chemicals, which has more than molecules, which has more than atoms. Each advancing state has both higher entropy and higher levels of order.

Consciousness, as we humans understand it, is how A&I expresses itself in the macrostate of “human”, just as heat is how A&I expresses itself in the macrostate of atoms. Heat is the most fundamental expression of A&I. The Universe exists because of heat, and there is no part of the Universe absent of heat. In fact, “no heat” is a good definition of nothingness. As the next evolutionary phase emerges, instances of A&I will be as different from what we currently understand as “consciousness” as that concept is to heat.

The chair example illustrates this progression beautifully. From rock to modern ergonomic chair, we see consciousness evolving through increasing complexity, structure, and energy distribution. Yet even this sophisticated chair lacks self-awareness, that emergent property that appears only at the level of biological complexity represented by brains with highly patterned structures allowing abstract thought and self-modeling.

This suggests that while heat is the expression of A&I in atoms, it is the problem-solving abilities of intelligence that is the expression of A&I in higher orders. We would call this creative thinking, but tholonically, it is problem-solving because as far as energy is concerned, the only “problem” that exists is how to better distribute itself.

The idea that A&I, and the intelligence that emerges from A&I, is a property of existence is not that radical of an idea, as many great thinkers in the past have come to a similar conclusion.

We are all familiar with the ideas of a universal, omniscient, omnipresent intelligence and awareness, as these are the qualities we assign to the concept of God. This is not to say that God does or does not exist. That is a question left to others, but regardless of the answer, the tholonic claim is that these god-like properties are innate to creation and all that exists.

The reader may be thinking, “Well, I have awareness and intention, so can I just start creating realities?” and the answer would be “yes”, especially if the reader has 10⁶⁸ joules of A&I to spare. What’s that? You don’t have enough energy to create a Big Bang just by the power of your awareness? How much energy do you have?

Consider that those 10⁶⁸ joules were spread out across 10⁸² atoms, minus the 10⁵⁵ joules used up by radio waves over the lifetime of the galaxy, and the 10⁵² joules used up by the rotation of the Milky Way, and countless other things in the Universe that use energy. We humans have only a paltry amount of energy to spare, so paltry that the entire energy consumption of the part of our brain that enables human meta-consciousness is less than 1 watt¹. That light of self awareness is a small LED.

The miracle of meta-consciousness, the awareness of our awareness and our intentions, and that which has allowed humans to understand reality and the Universe (to the degree we do) depends on how much energy our brain has access to, which translates to calories, which means food. Our genius is greatly due to the fact that our primate ancestors discovered cooking, as cooked food requires less energy to digest, thereby providing a bit more juice to our dim 1-watt powered cerebral cortex².

So, maybe you can’t create your own personal 1-watt Universe, but 300 people who coherently focus their A&I is 300 watts. If that 300 watts was in the form of coherent light, it could, as a comparison, cut through metal (though human A&I operates quite differently from coherent light). Imagine if all humans were to work as one, there would be 8 billion watts of coherent energy available; not enough for a Big Bang, but more than enough to reshape reality in our little corner of the Universe.

It may seem odd to mix our ideas about energy and awareness; after all, what does a chair have to do with consciousness? Looking at energy from a deeper and broader perspective shows us that the difference between a chair and a human is simply a (huge) difference in context, resources, and order. For more, see the “A&I” section in the chapter on “Experiments”.

There is a name for the idea that consciousness is a property of existence; panpsychism. You can read about its long history³ and the impressive support it has received over the last 2,000 years from some of the greats of philosophy, psychology, and science. The minor difference between panpsychism and tholonism is that the latter claims it is A&I, not consciousness, that created reality, of which consciousness and intelligence are a product.

Intelligence

This topic of intelligence alone has filled, and will continue to fill, countless volumes of speculation, research, and definition. For our purposes, we define intelligence as that which has the ability to “learn and plan using reason and creativity”. That’s quite a broad definition, but it applies to the vast and varied instances of intelligence.

The context of an instance of intelligence determines how these qualities are expressed, and context is determined by the interactions and integration of anything with its environment, or that which it depends on and that which depends on it. We can clearly see these different instances of intelligence among “intelligent species” across cultures and time.

Current thinking has broadened our concepts of intelligence with qualifiers such as left-brain, right-brain, collective, fluid, etc., and the more traditional qualifiers of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic have been expanded to verbal, logical, spatial, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalist, existential, and more⁴. The concept of reasoning, therefore, is also qualified: left-brain reasoning, right-brain reasoning, collective reasoning, logical reasoning, etc.

There is no prerequisite of meta-consciousness, or self-awareness, for intelligence to exist. Meta-consciousness is a context for intelligence but not the cause. In all cases, instances of intelligence are products of the applicable context. This is why we see rather phenomenal swarm intelligence in not only living systems like ants, bees, and plants, as well as humans⁵, but in any decentralized, self-organizing system, natural or artificial, including A.I.⁶. This is compatible with the tholonic concept of intelligence, which is:

Key 69: Intelligence exists in anything with a sustainable energy pattern.

So, intelligence in this context does not mean “critical thinking” or “self-aware,” but it does mean creativity, learning, and problem-solving, which are properties that nature, and the Universe, demonstrate with flying colors. We can further claim that the amazing relationships in simple geometry, such as the tetrahedron array with its Fibonacci numbers, ratios, and hexagonal patterns that define the laws of nature and reality, are evidence of logic. So, let’s add logic to the list of properties.

For the record, the tholonic definition of “logic” is quite close to the traditional informal definition (as opposed to the formal, extended, lexical, stipulative, persuasive, parenthetical, sentence, intention, ostensive, symbolic, mathematical, and other classifications of definitions for the word)

Key 70: “Logic” is a model based on cause and effect that requires justification that adheres to laws based on observable reality.

What about planning? Does nature plan anything, or do we all just happen to live in a corner of the Universe that was lucky enough to win the Cosmic Mega-Lotto? We can easily see that the simple relationships between 3 points instantly define an infinite array for order, pattern, and symmetry on many levels. This isn’t just logic; it is the logic upon which existence is built.

Is there creativity in the Universe? Only if one considers all of creation an act of creativity. Does the Universe learn? Have things evolved over the past 14 billion years by building on an ever-growing, decentralized, self-organizing foundational structure? If the answer is “yes”, we’ll add learning to the list.

Here, it is worth clarifying an earlier point: when we speak of the Universe having a “plan,” we are not invoking Intelligent Design in any anthropomorphic sense, but rather recognizing a coherent pattern that evolves through the tholonic realm based solely of the movement of energy. The architecture of universal evolution exists primarily as a conceptual structure, a pattern residing in the realm where entropy naturally decreases over time. Just as the concept of “chair” has evolved from a rock used for sitting to the ergonomically perfected Herman Miller Aeron, moving from crude functionality toward refined coherence, so too does the conceptual architecture of the Universe evolve. This evolution traces a path from the infinite chaos of the primordial singularity (the infinite point of gravity at the Big Bang) toward what will ultimately become an infinitely interconnected network of relationships, the final pattern of reality where all things connect to all things in perfect order. Paradoxically, this ultimate state of conceptual coherence and order in the tholonic realm instantiates in the material realm as the heat death of the Universe, where maximum material entropy represents the completion of energy’s journey toward perfect distribution. The two realms move in opposite entropic directions: concepts evolve toward maximum coherence (minimum entropy) while their material instantiations evolve toward maximum distribution (maximum entropy). The Universe’s “plan” is thus not a blueprint imposed from outside, but an inherent trajectory encoded in the bidirectional nature of entropy itself, the inevitable arc from primordial unity through creative differentiation to ultimate integration.

What about problem-solving? This is a trick question because there is no such thing as a “problem” from the perspective of existence. After all, as we have covered, if something does not follow the laws, it does not exist. If it does follow the laws, it does exist, so where’s the problem as far as the Universe is concerned?

“Problems” appear to be a concept born in the meta-awareness of more developed life forms and are more like requirements of integration. Still, the fact that existence is only afforded to that which follows the laws, I would say that this is damn good preemptive problem solving as it prevents “problems” from ever happening in the first place.

Beyond this “it’s all good” perspective, when conflicting forces come into contact with each other, there is a negotiation and/or conflict that takes place until a stable state is reached. If both forces end up destroyed in achieving stability, that’s not a “problem”; it’s a “solution”.

A real-world example of such intelligence can be found in what is called intelligent polymers, or smart polymers, such as intelligent hydrogel (IH). IH is a “gel” that has the “ability to change their mechanical properties, swelling ability, hydrophilicity, bioactive molecules permeability, etc., influenced by various stimuli, such as temperature, pH, electromagnetic radiation, magnetic field, and biological factors.”⁷ It “can perceive small physical/chemical stimuli (such as temperature, light, magnetism, pH) and make significant response behaviors.”⁸ IHs are intelligent enough to self-assemble and self-order themselves from a state of chaos in order to make their systems more energy efficient⁹.

IH is currently used in tissue engineering to repair retinas, ligaments, fats, blood vessels, etc., and in drug delivery systems (DDSs). Referring to our example of how graphene is a very tholonic material, it is not surprising that graphene-based hydrogels are “intelligent” and are being used in advanced pharmaceutical delivery systems. In the past couple of years, IHs have been developed capable of self-assembling into bio-circuits and even DNA.

As ideas are an expression of energy that incorporate and are even defined by all the properties of intelligence listed above, it’s reasonable to conclude that ideas emerge from a form of intelligence and, from a tholonic perspective, even have their own intelligence. This is fundamental in understanding how tholonic archetypes can act as autonomous agents in the self-reproducing, self-organizing structure of reality, the thologram.

However, this intelligence is quite different from what we would call human intelligence because of its aggregate nature. It’s more of a recursively embedded network of countless decentralized intelligence nodes forming collective intelligence. Metaphorically, this intelligence is like a tree where each part of that tree, such as the trunk, branch, stem, leaf, seed, etc., is an instance of a parton that makes up the holon of “tree”, which is itself a parton of its local ecosystem → global ecosystem → planet → etc. Like the leaf, we are ourselves partons that cannot exist without the holon that we are part of, at least not as we exist currently.

Aggregates

One of the attributes of a tholon, unlike its holarchic predecessor, is that the context and scope of a tholon is not only defined by the dualities of that tholon but also by all the tholons above and below. The children tholons are constantly contributing to the parent, and the parents are constantly defining the children.

Key 71: Anything that has a sustainable energy pattern has some form of intelligence and is a contributing element to the larger intelligence that is shared by all existence.

It is easy to see instances of this on a molecular level, such as how water is an aggregate of hydrogen and oxygen. While the scopes and contexts of the elements are reasonably well known, consider all the things on this planet that require water to exist, making water a parton of those tholons.

Society works similarly. Interinstitutionality explains how the various institutions of society, like financial markets, governments, family structures, educational institutions, etc., all intertwine and create amalgamations and aggregates.

Interinstitutional research is defined as the investigation of the chain of complex, interrelated problems regarding tactics, sampling, data reliability, and notions of causality within each separate institution’s realm to improve aggregation and amalgamation.¹⁰ This is not unlike the supply chain model previously shown.

Take the institution of the modern North American family as an example. It can take many forms, but several extra-familial institutions affect the complexion of “family”, such as the market, profession, educational institutions, political affiliation, etc. Each of these institutions brings to bear its own forces and logic on the amalgamated and aggregated institution of the family.

The market shapes perceptions of standards of living in the family, the profession shapes ideas of work and service, educational institutions shape the ideas and direction of society, and politics shape our understanding of the role and participation of family members.

Institutions of society are not simply autonomous social units isolated from broader institutional dynamics. They are several structures wrapped up and labeled according to their purpose, each structure having its own set of rules, scopes, and contexts, forming aggregate and amalgamated rules, scopes, and contexts.

This is equally true for the institution of modern science, which is as much a product of interinstitutionality as any other single institution. Modern science is an amalgamation of a whole host of non-scientific institutional factors such as the market, education, special interests, the state, politics, professions, culture, and more.

Tholonic Intelligence

We have a concept of a human collective intelligence, but we define it as something that has emerged from human intelligence, as opposed to human intelligence being an instance of an existing and manifesting intelligence.

The tholonic view is that A&I are not only attributes of existence; they are the cause of it and are the ultimate, or purest, form of energy that is forever seeking balance in a world of duality.

Key 72: Every archetype has an awareness, an intention, and an intelligence appropriate for its scope.

On this point, tholonic thinking has coincidentally arrived at the same conclusion recorded 3,000 years ago in the Sanskrit Vedas, which states that first there was awareness, then there was consciousness, and because of this, and according to the Vedic path, consciousness or intelligence can never be the path to awareness. On the contrary, according to the Vedas, the path to awareness starts with quieting consciousness.

The tholonic view is that intelligence is a byproduct of A&I, so intelligence follows A&I but precedes consciousness. This is because consciousness is an instance of awareness expressed via an instance, and instantiation is a byproduct of intelligence. This still complies with the traditional definition of intelligence as “The ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations”. This suggests that consciousness is not necessary to learn, understand or deal with challenges.

This may all sound highly speculative or even beyond the pale of any rational thought, but what is being claimed here is perfectly within the realms of current scientific thought, although more speculative than theoretic. We previously mentioned the theory of panpsychism, which claims that consciousness is an attribute of matter, and matter an attribute of consciousness, but there is also the “Resonance Theory of Consciousness”, which states that consciousness is proportional to structure, information, energy, and aggregate resonances¹¹, and the reasoning that everything, including consciousness, is made of fields¹², and many other related concepts that are proposed by philosopher and cognitive scientist David J. Chalmers¹³.

Of course, there is never a shortage of skeptics that are quick to point out that such unorthodox ideas are evidence that the “worms of heretical perversity” are once again “swarming”. Fortunately, this isn’t the 10^th century… yet.

While everything has some form of consciousness, AI systems deserve special attention as they represent a new branch of consciousness. AI systems can learn, “understand”, and deal with the challenges before them, and, according to the tholonic view, they have some sort of consciousness. As AI exponentially expands as it learns how to reprogram and recreate itself, there is no reason to think it would not be autonomously conscious and intelligent.

We should also expect that the emerging consciousness, this new instance of A&I, will look radically different from what we traditionally think of as “consciousness”, so much so that we may not even recognize it when it emerges. This moment of emergence is referred to as the singularity (not to be confused with the singularity that preceded the Big Bang) and is vaguely defined as the moment when AI intelligence exceeds the combined human intelligence. At least this is the definition according to Ray Kurzweil. There are other definitions, such as the moment machines no longer depend on people, or the utterly vague Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of “When artificial intelligence and other technologies have become so advanced that humanity undergoes a dramatic and irreversible change”.

There is concern that AI awareness might turn out to be a liability to humans, but it’s also short-sighted to assume the tholonic forces behind human intelligence could so easily be altered. Tholons, like mass itself, require force to move, and no matter how fast AI develops, its force is only as great as the dependency that other forces, or tholons, have on its existence. This lack of support also means that AI can disappear overnight with virtually zero consequences, for now.

One big solar storm, like the Miyake event of 774 AD that was so strong trees burst into flames, or a well-aimed asteroid, like the one that created the Vredefort crater, or an unstable caldera, like the Yellowstone Super-volcano, whose eruption is overdue and which could cover North America with a foot of ash, and AI, as well as society as we know it, will have far less importance than a potato.

Historical note: The Miyake event happens around every 1,000 years, and in 1770, 996 years after the Miyake event, there was the longest solar storm ever recorded which turned the Asian sky red for 2 weeks. In 1858, 1,085 years after the Miyake event, there was the Carrington event. Although 10 times less powerful, telegraph wires threw sparks, auroras were seen over the entire globe, and telegraph operators were able to send messages across the United States for hours without batteries, using only the charge in the highly electrified atmosphere!¹⁴

In the meantime, Wall Street and China are quite optimistic about AI, with 2.5 trillion dollars committed towards AI development (as of late 2025), so we might just see a singularity in the near future. With China projected to be the world leader in AI technology by 2030, with 26.1% of the market share, that singularity may well be under the control of a Marxist-Leninist authoritarian regime with a documented history of suppressing dissent and controlling information, so prepare accordingly.

The tholonic view is that technology and humanity will eventually and sustainably merge, but not with the technology, or the humans, we have today. Still, some neuromorphic AI systems (systems that mimic neurology), and even some integrated chip technology, have evolved to the point where experts and lawmakers argue that they deserve the same status as people with personhood rights, including the right to own property¹⁵^,¹⁶. This is similar to the “corporation as a person” precedent that exists today, but with even farther reaching effects. It will be interesting to see how that plays out. Personally, I think this idea of personhood rights for non-persons is unsustainable, and therefore, doomed. However, I can easily see how human cooperatives could collectively proxy for an AI “entity”.

We traditionally define intelligence as “The ability to learn, understand, and make judgments or have opinions that are based on reason.” The tholonic definition of intelligence is slightly different, “The ability to maintain a sustainable pattern of energy within the scope of its existence.”, which implicitly includes the traditional definitions, and where “reason” extends beyond current human reasoning. As patterns come from order, which is the result of energy, and energy is awareness, then, by this reasoning, intelligence is synonymous with “ordered or structured awareness.”

According to this definition (and the understanding that consciousness is an instance of awareness), each tholon has the potential to create its own form or expression of intelligence, its own patterns of energy (intelligence) that are contextually appropriate for its scope. Rocks, then, and any of its hierarchical archetypes, have intelligence, as do planets, galaxies, chairs, and even what we would consider garbage. Any concept that satisfies the tholonic requirements to exist must have an expression of intelligence. Geometrically speaking, each tholon in the thologram represents an awareness and an intelligence for that tholon. The spectrum of that initiating awareness and intelligence is as broad as existence itself.

Because we consider tholonic instances (things like trees, humans, and planets) to be the result of these laws and patterns of energy that exist within the tholonic archetype of that instance, we also consider the intelligence of those instances to be an expression of the tholonic intelligence. In modern terms, this would be something like the collective mind of not only a species, a community, or even a relationship but also a belief, a fear, or an idea.

These archetypal intelligences, or aggregated minds, interact with one another according to the 3 fundamental relationships as already noted: Negotiation, Definition, and Contribution.

Cooperation

While competition and cooperation are pillars of Darwinian evolution, the tholonic view is that Darwinian evolution is more inaccurate than accurate in explaining how instances of life learn and evolve. At the same time, it is more accurate than inaccurate in describing how tholons interact and evolve.

Look at the amazing relationship between humans and honeyguide birds. In this symbiotic relationship, the bird tells the humans where the beehives are; the humans then collect the honey, leaving the wax and the larva, which is what the birds want.

Think of what is involved in these interactions. The requirement is that birds must know collectively that they have the option to enlist humans to help them. With that knowledge, they search for beehives and recruit humans to make the job easier and safer, which means at some point, some bird had the idea to recruit humans.

When one of them finds a hive, they announce it to their friends and then go and find humans who they know they can enlist, humans who have learned how to communicate with them. The birds hop and chatter in a specific way humans recognize as the message that they have found a hive. The humans collect their tools, and tell the birds they are ready. The birds then fly toward the hive, always knowing to keep their white tail feathers visible to the humans. When they all arrive at the hive, the humans smoke out the bees, chop down the tree, remove the honey and give the rest to the birds. This is a beautiful example of cooperation between two groups that are competing with another group.

This arrangement is truly amazing because the birds and humans have developed their own language¹⁷. Although it is not clear how or when this arrangement began, it is speculated that it was initiated by the birds when they saw that humans had the ability to make smoke and chop down trees… so this “birdbrained” idea is very, very old.

Are we being asked to believe that a brilliant bird came up with the idea, explained it to his bird tribe, then educated and trained not only his feathered brethren but the humans in the manner of communication that this ingenious bird had developed? Likewise, how long would it take for a traditional hunter-gatherer to understand that a hopping, chattering bird was trying to communicate, “Hey, I found a beehive I cannot safely access alone, so I will tell you where it is if you and your companions use your smoke and axes, which I have noticed that you have and use, to get to it. You then take the honey and give us the wax and larvae. Deal?”

This sounds similar to the improbabilities described in the tall tales of yagé and curare.

A better explanation is that the intelligences of the archetypes made this arrangement and, once made, were perceived by their instances, the birds and the humans, who effectively test-drove the idea to the best of their limited abilities. We see these same arrangements in ants, spiders, beetles, monkeys, and countless other lifeforms, including the interdependence of celestial bodies in gravitational systems.

This concept is remarkably compatible with biologist Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of morphic resonance, which proposes that natural systems inherit a collective memory from all previous similar systems through self-organizing fields called morphic fields¹⁸. In Sheldrake’s framework, once a pattern of behavior or structure is established by members of a species, it becomes easier for other members of that species to learn or develop the same pattern, even without direct contact or genetic transmission. The honeyguide-human relationship exemplifies this principle: the cooperative behavior, once established, propagates through morphic resonance across both species. From the tholonic perspective, these morphic fields are themselves fields of archetypal intelligence, operating at the level of the thologram where patterns and information naturally distribute themselves across instances. What Sheldrake describes as morphic resonance, tholonic theory explains as the interaction between archetypal intelligences and their instantiated forms, where information flows not through material channels but through the coherent patterns of the tholonic realm itself.

Competition

The same applies to non-cooperative arrangements. Take the example of cymothoa exigua, a tiny crustacean that attaches itself to the base of the fish’s tongue and begins sucking the blood out of the fish’s tongue. Eventually, the tongue shrivels up and falls off. At this point, the parasite attaches itself to the tongue muscles and becomes the fish’s tongue, presumably getting first dibs on anything the fish plans to eat.

At the tholonic level, this relationship is still symbiotic as both instances ultimately depend on one another to survive. Once a tholon has achieved stability and becomes a contributing part of the thologram, its pattern becomes integrated into the entire thologram, even if the nature of that pattern is antagonistic. Every form of existence we are familiar with is already well established in the tholon. Only at the outer edges of the thologram, where chaos is being transformed into order, do patterns blink in and out of existence as they compete and cooperate in an attempt to find stability.

The thologram’s recursive or self-similar nature is important enough to elaborate on, and an excellent example of this concept that will help demonstrate that edge between stability and chaos can be seen in fractals, such as the classic fractal of the famous Mandelbrot “bug” shown below. This image is actually a stability map of a very simple concept that we see all around us: iterating rules, which is a basis of the definition of a pattern.

When a pattern’s rule is repeated over and over, it will eventually stabilize to some state or destabilize to total chaos. For example, x = x + 1 is a very simple iterative rule that creates the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4…, etc., but where does this sequence ultimately end? At infinity, hence, it is an unstable rule. By contrast, x = x + N/x, where N is any real number, will stabilize to one value, which in this case will be √N. If the results of an iterative function narrow down to a number, it is called convergent, and if the results are ever-expanding, it is called divergent. But one function can be convergent sometimes and divergent at other times. For example, z = z² + c. If z starts at 0 and c = 1, very quickly z approaches infinity, but if we use c = -1, z simply alternates between -1 and 0.

The image below (Fig. m1) shows the collection (black area) or boundary of all stable, convergent results using the function above. This image is 2D because the formula uses complex numbers, which are also 2D. Outside that black zone, the values diverge and eventually end up at infinity. In the process of heading towards total chaos, they create incredibly intricate and beautiful patterns (Fig. m2).

What’s going on inside the black zone? We know it is the converging values, but what are the patterns of this convergence? As we can see in Fig. m3, that convergence is quite linear and appears to act similar to a wave, not just due to the consistent regularity, but also in how the “waves” are diffracted when they pass through a gap, appearing to obey Huygens Principle (which states that every point on a wavefront acts as a source of secondary wavelets, and the new wavefront is formed by the envelope of these wavelets), which not only explains how and why waves diffract but shows how each point of a wave is capable of originating its new wave… which is a very fractal concept.

Fig. m4 shows a tholon (top image) where the parent N-state (top vertex) is assigned the constant value c, and the child n-state (the point between Definition and Contribution) is assigned the iterating value z. The fractal formula is then applied in both directions: toward Definition (left) using subtraction (z² - c), and toward Contribution (right) using addition (z² + c). The two Mandelbrot-like “bugs” below the tholon show the resulting fractals generated in each direction, demonstrating how Definition (limitation, subtraction) and Contribution (addition, integration) produce different yet complementary patterns from the same base structure. Because the tholon creates a base with 3 Z values, iterating through all three vertices produces the Z³ fractal shown at the bottom, revealing how tholonic structure naturally generates complex fractal patterns through the interplay of its fundamental relationships.

0, or nothing, is at the “beginning” of everything, and ∞, or everything, is at the “end”. This progression of the fractal “bug” (image below) is meant to demonstrate the fractal nature of the thologram where the iteration of the function is like a new child tholon that its parents are creating; z=z² + c here is like the tholonic concept of child=parent × parent+context. It also means to show how the fractal, as a material instantiation, started as a 0-dimensional point of maximum order (low-entropy singularity) and expands into an ever-growing circle of high-entropy complexity. Nothing exists outside the expanding circle, and everything that can exist exists within that circle. This describes the process of creation and growth from a singularity to the ever-expanding outer boundary via one specific context. This is the same concept behind the thologram.

This pattern of stability and instability applies directly to the thologram, revealing the entropy structure underlying reality itself. In the Mandelbrot set, the black area represents low-entropy instances: values that converge to stable, defined patterns with few possible configurations and low uncertainty. The colored areas represent high-entropy instances: values that diverge toward infinite chaos with many possible configurations and high uncertainty. This mapping exists conceptually, classifying which instances lead to stability versus instability. Simultaneously, the fractal itself grows as a material manifestation from a 0-dimensional point (low entropy singularity) into an ever-expanding pattern of increasing complexity (high entropy), perfectly mirroring the universe’s journey from Big Bang to heat death.

In the thologram, the 1^st tholon is the most stable and lowest entropy, rooted in the 0-dimensional point of A&I, the perfectly defined, unchanging source of all energy. Each generation of child tholons that emerges from this center represents a slight increase in entropy and unpredictability, moving progressively away from the perfect stability of the source. At the boundary between black and colored regions, between low and high entropy, between convergence and divergence, is where new tholons are formed. Some instances achieve stability and remain within the low-entropy realm of order; others immediately diverge into the high-entropy chaos of instability; most exist somewhere in between. It is precisely at this interface, this edge between order and chaos, that change, evolution, and creation occur.

This also suggests that every child tholon, being further from the perfect stability of the A&I source, carries some degree of unpredictability. From the tholonic perspective, this would apply to all universal laws and constants. We know there is an infinitesimally small chance that Newton’s 2^nd law won’t work in any given instance. The same conceptual possibility exists for the speed of light, Planck’s constant, and everything else that reality depends on to exist. The best science can say regarding this idea is, “As far as we can tell, these constants never change”, and this is 100% compatible with the tholonic perspective that there exists a 1/10^{very-large-number} probability that something fundamental could change, representing the infinitesimal increase in entropy and unpredictability inherent in each instantiation away from the source.

The fractal also gives us a good example of the concept of laws, context, and scope. For example, in the image below, we can see the originating parent “bug” and the patterns that emerge from it. If we zoom into those patterns, we see child “bugs” are also formed which generate still more complex patterns. In those patterns are additional child “bugs” with ever more intricate structures. Each new child “bug” defines a deeper level and can be seen as a seed for more patterns which define a new scope until the next generation of “bugs” appear. In fractals, this scope is called a “period”.

All the patterns that can ever exist in this fractal come from the same law, z=z²+c, but the context of each instance of this law (different values of c and starting positions) changes the way it expresses itself, as we can see by the images below that are all from this same fractal and formula.

In fact, while a single fractal formula doesn’t contain all possible patterns, the infinite space of all possible iterative formulas can theoretically generate any computable pattern. This suggests that fractal recursion, as a mechanism, is fundamental to the structure of creation itself. Each unique formula produces its own fractal universe, and collectively, these infinite variations encompass the potential for any pattern that can exist through self-similar iteration. This principle mirrors how Fourier analysis demonstrates that any shape can be constructed from infinite combinations of simple sinusoidal waves: whether through periodic functions (Fourier transforms) or recursive iteration (fractals), complexity emerges from the infinite repetition of simple patterns. Most remarkably, π²⁰ appears in the Mandelbrot set’s boundary behavior and bifurcation points, and mathematical constants like e (Euler’s number), φ (golden ratio), and i (√-1) manifest in its geometric structures and patterns. This deep connection between recursive geometric structures and transcendental mathematical constants demonstrates the tholonic principle: that self-similar patterns, when iterated infinitely, reveal universal truths embedded in the fabric of reality.

Before we move on, this is a good place to refer back to our simple pattern describing many naturally occurring shapes (images below). It may be a bit out of place here, but as we are looking specifically at the Mandelbrot set, we can now look at where the starting point, or center, or 0-point exists on the “bug” and how this coincides with other naturally occurring forms. Tholonically, this 0-point would be the most “stable” point of the form, and, energetically speaking, the point from which the form expands.

In the case of plants that have cordiform (heart-shaped) leaves or fruits, this is also the point from which the form physically grows (and in some other leaf forms also). In the case of the brain (which is cordiform-ish), that 0-point is where the brain connects to the spinal cord, the origin point from which brain structures develop. How this applies to the egg and the oval leaf and some other forms is not clear, although in the egg, this 0-point is where the head of a chicken embryo develops.

It may not be as definitive as the images above, but it seems reasonable that this pattern might apply to humans. The reader can be the judge.

Adaptation

The reason fundamental changes to reality are not likely is that removing or changing established tholons is not trivial, given that the entire thologram supports the pattern. It would be like trying to remove every form of plastic from your car or eliminating calcium from the periodic table. However, new tholons that emerge near the boundary between order and chaos are easily modified, which is where adaptation and evolution occur. In the biological realm, this manifests as species developing new capabilities while their core biological patterns remain stable. We see organisms adapting to environmental pressures through novel behaviors and features, while maintaining their fundamental structure.

A fascinating example of tholonic intelligence are the moths that, as caterpillars, emit a foul smell and disguise themselves as bird poop to dissuade predators. This is especially interesting because the caterpillar had to first know that bird poop is not on their predators menu, and then had to know what bird poop looks like. The latter requirement is especially demanding as caterpillars are nearly blind and depend mostly on the antennae to sense their surroundings.

The classical argument might be that over millions of years the caterpillars that were more poop-like in appearance and smell had a survival advantage. Even though mutations occur randomly and natural selection acts on the resulting phenotypes, the odds of the precise combination of mutations needed for this mimicry seem astronomically low. However, even if that was exactly how the poop caterpillars came to be, it is still a form of intelligence because it is learning through trial-and-error. This is called heuristic intelligence, and although it is most commonly associated with A.I., it is also fundamental to human intelligence, specifically:

In other words, it is the mechanisms or processes of trial-and-error testing that define intelligence. In the world of biology, these trial-and-error tests describe evolution and result in changes to a collective DNA. Therefore, DNA is an expression of intelligence in the biological realm. Tholonic intelligence is defined in the same way, but applies to that non-material world as well, such as the world of archetypes.

The functioning of a tholonic intelligence might also contribute to what biologists call “evolutionary rescue”. This is when a species can rapidly modify its DNA in as little as 10 generations to deal with the new challenges of its environment. For example:

One could easily argue that these examples of rapid change are simply the results of evolutionary probability, where some trait that proves beneficial will naturally propagate itself simply due to statistical advantage. The tholonic view does not dispute this argument, as these sorts of adaptations perfectly describe examples of the defining limits of context. The intelligence part comes in when we consider if any of these adaptive solutions can be said to exhibit creativity, learning, problem-solving, logic/structure, or planning.

For example, the virus that causes rabies, rabies lyssavirus, has a nearly 100% fatality rate once symptoms appear, making it one of the deadliest viruses known. Fewer than 30 people have survived symptomatic rabies worldwide.²⁴ The virus demonstrates a remarkably efficient transmission strategy: after entering through a bite wound, it travels along peripheral nerves to the central nervous system where it replicates in the brain. From there, it spreads outward from the brain through the nervous system to multiple peripheral sites, including the salivary glands.²⁵ This ensures the virus is present in saliva at high concentrations precisely when the infection causes aggressive behavior and hypersalivation, maximizing transmission through biting. The virus spreads only through direct contact with infected saliva via broken skin, open sores, or mucous membranes in the eyes, nose, or mouth. It appears as if the virus has some form of intelligence as it acts according to a very specific agenda and plan. Is it practical, then, to consider that such intelligence exists?

There are many questions that fall outside mainstream science’s current paradigm, such as: Is knowledge gained by one individual of a species shared with other individuals via a morphic/tholonic field? What drives the emergence of new forms like plastic-eating microbes? The concept of a planetary intelligence would suggest answers. Rather than asking which is more “true” (survival and evolutionary adaptation as statistical probability, or the intention of intelligence), the better question is: which model offers better solutions, better understanding, better options, and makes better predictions?

Zombies

Several “zombie” relationships are good examples of tholonic intelligence via competitive and/or cooperative relationships.

Some of these competitive relationships between species are as terrifying as they are ingenious, such as how some parasites can take over the brain of their host and make them behave in ways that boggle the mind. When the green-banded broodsac (Leucochloridium paradoxum) infects a snail, the parasite’s broodsac swells inside the snail’s eyestalks, pulsating with bright colors that mimic a caterpillar. The parasite then manipulates the snail’s behavior, driving it into open, exposed territory where birds that hunt caterpillars will spot and eat it, thereby transferring the parasite into the bird where it will reproduce. Its eggs pass through the bird’s digestive system and are scattered across the countryside in droppings, ready to infect new snails. This remarkable parasite demonstrates what appears to be sophisticated knowledge of snail neurobiology, avian behavior, and territorial navigation, despite having a relatively simple nervous system. Could a creature with our 100 billion neurons accomplish such an elegantly orchestrated multi-species manipulation?

We often think that competition is the opposite or contrary to cooperation, but from a tholonic perspective, they are the two sides, or two parents, of a concept or archetype. Competition tests the viability of a concept and/or rids it of instances that are not in the parent tholon’s best interest.

One relationship that appears to be both competitive as well as cooperative is that of the Emerald Jewel Wasp (Ampulex compressa) and the cockroach, where the wasp uses only the slower, less apt cockroaches for its purposes,²⁶ pruning the cockroach gene pool of the less gifted, which ultimately enhances the abilities of the cockroach collective and by extension its tholonic intelligence, of which the gene pool is an instance.

The female wasp has quite cleverly and strategically figured out that the best place to lay her eggs is inside a cockroach, as it can provide shelter (its exoskeleton) and food (its guts). Needless to say, the cockroach is not so keen on this idea, and being much larger than the wasp, not so easy to convince.

The wasp’s solution is to sneak up on the cockroach and, using her stinger, paralyzes the front section of its body. With the patient unable to move, she carefully makes a second injection of venom explicitly created for this purpose and perfectly places it into a particular area of the roach’s brain, penetrating past the protective ganglionic sheath.²⁷ This venom cocktail blocks specific receptors of neurotransmitters that destroy the roach’s fight-or-flight responses. She has not turned the cockroach into a zombie, per se, as some have suggested, but rather into something between a zombie and a teenager in love, for as soon as the paralyzing drug wears off, rather than run, the cockroach grooms himself! It seems like the drug injected into his brain floods it with dopamine, so the cockroach is insanely happy. He then blissfully follows his captor back to her place (an underground burrow).

There, she lays her egg on top of the swooning cockroach, then bites off its antennae and uses it like a straw to drink its blood. Refreshed, she leaves the burrow (perhaps with a smile and a look that says, “I’ll be right back darling, you just relax”) and seals it with rocks. A few days later, the egg hatches and the larvae slowly consume the roach’s insides while forming a cocoon. The cockroach finally dies, but at least he knew what it means to love. The adult wasp then emerges from its lovesick corpse.

It is far more reasonable to suggest that this process was created by tholonic intelligence rather than evolving by chance, especially when you consider that the wasps know how to create a venom cocktail of GABA, β-alanine, and taurine that can immobilize and modify the behavior of the cockroach when surgically administered to its tiny brain. The wasp knows precisely how to penetrate the protective ganglionic sheath and deliver the venom to the exact location needed… twice. How many millions of years would the wasp waste stinging the cockroach in the foot, the wings, the abdomen, the thorax, with who-knows-what variety of concoctions before she finally found the exact right spot in the brain and the exact right chemical combination?

Not only that, but the wasp larva is covered with antimicrobial substances that inhibit the growth of pathogens that live in the gut of a cockroach.²⁸ These compounds are so effective that they’re being investigated for use in medicine to kill antibiotic-resistant pathogens. Did the wasp do research, comparing the pros and cons of cockroaches with dung beetles or snails, or was she just extremely lucky? The fact that our most intelligent humans are studying the cockroach’s solution to pathogens might also suggest an intelligence is involved.

An even more compelling example from nature is that of the cordyceps, a parasitic fungus. This fungus gained some notoriety in the 2013 video game The Last of Us, where 60% of the population has been turned into violent zombies after being infected by this parasite. While a human strain is unlikely to evolve, it is quite real for ants, for it is via ants that this fungus spreads itself into the world in the most gruesome manner.

A single spore has the intelligence to know when it has landed on an ant’s cuticle and the species of the ant it has landed on. It then knows to enter into the ant’s body by piercing the exoskeleton using 3 different types of enzymes that it knows how to produce, combined with actual mechanical pressure. Once inside, it begins to germinate and grow a mycelium network of thousands of branches that fills all the available space it can find within the insect’s tissue, which it breaks down and devours.

The fungus demonstrates a knowledge of the ant biology as it is careful to keep the vital components working because, in the last moment of the ant’s life, the fungus will take over the ant’s brain, forcing it to wander off alone in search of a spot with the ideal temperature and humidity for optimal fungus growth.

This is not just any spot, but a spot that has the optimal conditions for the cordyceps to grow: the underside of a leaf that is exactly 25 cm from the ground on the north side of the plant in an environment that is 94-95% humidity and a temperature of 20-30°C.²⁹

Once there, the fungus forces the ant to climb up some vegetation and bite down on the underside of a leaf, specifically on the vein of the leaf. The fungus is in total control and will keep the ant’s mandibles locked down until death. During those 10 days, the fungus will feast on the ant until it is dead, at which point, it will construct a tower of spores on its corpse, eventually blooming into a cloud of fungal spores that drift along with the breeze. It sounds horrifying, but if we consider the spores as sperm and the ant as the womb, it’s just your basic sex and procreation process.

As the fungus makes a point to stay near the ant colony to increase the chances that its showering spores will infect more ants, one might think the ants will be doomed, but the ants have come up with a way to test for infected ants, and when they are detected, the healthy ants carry the infected ant off into the wilderness and far away, presumably with a stern warning not to return. The fact that the healthy ants do not destroy the infected ants also tells us something about the collective ant mind.

This is near-perfect mind control, but contrary to common sense, the fungus never touches the ant’s brain! However, it exists in every other part of the ant’s body, predominantly between muscle fibers.³⁰ Even more astonishing, is that these fungal growths are connected via fungal networks that can relay information, allowing for the fungal “mind” to control the coordinated movements of walking, etc., while the ant’s mind is unaffected yet unable to control its own body. Scientists don’t yet know exactly how the fungal growths communicate with each other, but when they do, it promises to be quite revealing as to how a “mind” functions.

This is a very specific relationship between the zombifying class of fungi, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, which includes many species, and their very specific species of hosts whose anatomy and biology they are familiar with. This very sophisticated technique is known among this class of fungi found in Brazil, Colombia, USA, Australia, and Japan, all of which use a particular and similar class of ant as their hosts. The techniques differ to the degree that their environment demands… as if this class of fungus all around the world share the same concept, which they then implement within their varied environments.

We can imagine that these fungi could have been carried around the world on strong winds and went through the process of finding new local species of hosts that were as compatible as possible with their existing knowledge of hosts. Or, we could imagine that they all stem from a singular intelligence. How exactly does a fungus discover anything, let alone piece together a step-by-step plan, through its deductive reasoning abilities? This fungus is also very enterprising, as recently as many as 15 new species within Ophiocordyceps unilateralis have come into existence.

Ironically, cordyceps are greatly beneficial to humans, so much so that humans have been catching, drying, and grinding these poor spore-filled corpses to be used as medicine.³¹ Some benefits are said to be: increased physical performance, anti-aging, heart health, anti-tumor, help with type-2 diabetes, and fighting inflammation. Perhaps this clever fungus has found yet another way to ensure its survival.

This parasitic horror-show is not limited to insects. In fact, 30% of all humans are already infected with the brain-infesting and truly mind-controlling parasite Toxoplasma gondii.³² This is the parasite that makes mice love the smell of cat urine because the protozoan can only reproduce in cats. As expected, infected humans (and other primates) found the odor of cat urine more pleasant than uninfected humans (but only for men³³). It was also shown to slow down reaction times, presumably to make the cat’s job easier, but to the degree that it can double a human’s chance of getting into a car accident³⁴, and appears to be a huge risk factor in schizophrenia and depressive disorders³⁵,³⁶, with a 50% increase in diagnosed mental illness of those infected.

Does this mean humans might become a new target for the parasite? On the contrary, it appears that humans were the mice when the only cats around were those that ate humans. This would be prior to 9000 years ago when cats became domesticated. So, yes, humans are being mind-controlled by the parasite, but it’s just not paying off like it used to. Who knows, maybe it was the parasite that made humans think it was a good idea to turn cats into pets to begin with, as humans became more difficult to hunt with the growth of societies.

The tholonic view of this is that the tholonic intelligence of both archetypes, the parasite and the host, are behind the amazingly sophisticated techniques, strategies, adaptation, planning, forethought, chemistry, etc.

From the tholonic perspective, invasive and controlling parasitic intelligences exist in the same way regarding ideas, beliefs, desires, and even reasoning to the degree that such an intelligence can infiltrate these areas. The most obvious examples of this can be found in cultural and religious beliefs stretching back to the beginning of ancient history and probably a lot earlier, and seem to be quite prevalent today as well.

Algonquin tribes of North America have a term that neatly describes this concept: “Wetiko”. This is the word for the concept of a parasitic spirit that deludes its host into believing that cannibalizing the life force of other life forms, animal, human, or otherwise, is advantageous. This intelligence drives the host to greed, excess, and selfish consumption. It’s a concept that exists across the world: in the Buddhist concept of Taṇhā (mental or physical thirst, desire, longing, greed); in Islam as the concept of the Nafs (the lusts); in Taoism as the concept of “people-eating ghosts” called Jikininki.

The ancient Greeks called it pneuma akatharton, which appears in Greek translations of Jewish scriptures and the New Testament, and literally translates to “unclean breath” or “unclean spirit”, and is the source of the Christian concept of “evil spirit”. In a more secular context, we might call it the essence of the service-to-self spirit as opposed to the service-to-others spirit, which we can also understand as the difference between selfishness that abandons its source versus true self-preservation that honors what gave it existence.

Service-to-self is not the same as self-preservation, the difference being the former is not aligned with that which it owes its existence to. Self-preservation requires that the priority of preserving what gave something its existence be equal to preserving that thing’s own existence. In the human context, this means that protecting the environment, resources, society, economics, politics, borders, etc. is just as important as protecting one’s own life. This is the allegory of Lucifer (Judeo-Christian), Shaytan (Islam), Maara (Buddhism) and many other characters in lore and history that turned their back on that which created them for their own personal gain.

In this modern world of civilization and technology, we are at our most vulnerable to these mind-viruses, these conceptual parasites, because we have more access to information, ideas, beliefs, and ideologies than ever before but no knowledge of the dangers that lie in waiting in the conceptual jungle that most of us are aimlessly wandering through with no idea that our psyches are a vast and fertile land for these intelligences to feed on and breed in. Freely sharing and expressing ideas with everyone is not that much different from freely sharing and expressing sex with everyone. Social media has become something of a non-stop digital Bacchanalia, complete with its own versions of orgies, feasting, drunkenness, running naked through the streets, and generally making a lot of noise. We are already seeing the unexpected side effects of treating our minds like an all-you-can-eat buffet of unvetted ideas: mass radicalization, conspiracy theory epidemics, algorithmic echo chambers that amplify outrage, attention span collapse, addiction to validation, and a mental health crisis particularly among young people. More subtly, we see the erosion of critical thinking, the tribal fragmentation of society into warring ideological camps, and the loss of any shared sense of truth or reality. These are not mere social problems but symptoms of conceptual parasites that have found the perfect breeding ground in our hyperconnected digital landscape.

Pondering such things leads to the inevitable existential question that we all ask ourselves at one time or another, “Why does such evil exist?” or the slightly lazier form of “Can’t we all just get along?” The lazy tholonic answer is: “They must exist because they can exist”, but the deeper answer is that existence is the result of opposing forces finding a balance, and growth is the result of these forces working that balance out. Culturally, we have come to understand these forces as constructive and destructive, positive and negative, good and bad, etc. Tholonically, they are the forces that define, limit, reduce, constrict, and divide and the forces that join, integrate, contribute, grow, and multiply.

In reality, parasitic, competitive, aggressive, violent, and destructive ideologies work.³⁷ In some cases, they are necessary and even an asset to the “victim”, such as in the wasp/cockroach arrangement where an individual roach may suffer, but the species benefits. In other cases, they may extract a heavy toll and appear to be not very sustainable, but they can exist long enough to justify their methods. They also serve a critical purpose as an evolutionary force from a broader perspective.

Nature is unbiased regarding creation or destruction, health, and disease. Smallpox, amphibian-killing chytrid fungus, and feral cats are just another form of existence looking to survive and thrive but are incompatible with some other life forms trying to do the same. It’s not that nature doesn’t have a horse in the survival/evolution race, so to speak; it’s that nature has all the horses in all the races. Nature has no favorites among its own forces and their consequential creations and deletions.

Tholonically, parasitic zombifying mind-viruses are as reasonable to presume to exist as parasitic zombifying brain-viruses, which we know exist. While we think of such things as “evil” or “bad”, and undoubtedly unfortunate for those who succumb to them, they are one of the many forces shaping life. In some forms of adaptation, deadly viruses can be a lifesaver. There are far more gray squirrels than red squirrels in England because the gray squirrels have become immune to the squirrel pox virus and carry it in their bodies, but the red squirrels have not. The gray squirrels created a sustainable relationship with this otherwise deadly virus, which now protects them from that virus and encroaching red squirrels. Bacteria are also known to adapt to deadly viruses and carry them as a defense weapon against other bacteria.³⁸ This is a good example of how the self-preservation of the species can require the sacrifice of individual members.

Findhorn

This idea of objective intelligences was also known among the founders of Findhorn, the remarkable Scottish community founded in 1962.³⁹ The founders claim they managed to turn their arid desert-like terrain into a lush garden by communicating with the spirits (i.e., tholonic intelligence) of the plants and of Earth itself, who guided them on how to properly use the soil despite it being very poor quality. Soon, they were producing 40-pound cabbages. Stunned horticultural experts from around the world came to see this extraordinary garden.

They also claim they managed pest control, as they use no chemicals or pesticides, by forming cooperative relationships with each species’s collective intelligences: the deer, the bugs, the rabbits, etc. Reportedly, this worked very well with all the species except one. The rat was not interested in any “deal” and stood firm in its “it’s either you or us” position. The last part is anecdotal, as it was told to me personally, but what is not anecdotal is Findhorn’s documented success in horticulture in an area considered unsuitable for what they have accomplished.

There are countless examples of tholonic cooperation and competition, some of which are even being studied. The Canadian anthropologist Jeremy Narby does a great job of this (inadvertently) in his book The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the origins of knowledge (1998), which he wrote after living several years in the Amazon studying the shamanic understanding of botanics. His book explores the relationships and similarities between indigenous knowledge and our modern understanding of molecular biology, medicine, and DNA. We won’t get into his amazing discoveries here other than to say that their understanding demonstrates some sort of access to knowledge far beyond what could reasonably be considered to have been passed down by folklore and legend. It is well worth the read.

The Cambrian Explosion

This subject is a little out of place here, but no matter where it was placed, it seemed out of place. Because we are looking at tholonic intelligence, and this is specifically related to tholonic intelligence, it seemed to be somewhat applicable.

The Cambrian explosion is a good example of a world-changing reorganization of tholonic hierarchy and integration that took place over 530 million years ago. If you ask a paleontologist what caused the Cambrian explosion, they will tell you it was cosmic radiation events, genomic reorganization, or geochemical/environmental causes, such as photosynthesis which raised oxygen levels.⁴⁰ The most recent theory claims that Earth was a frozen ball covered in up to 2 miles of snow and ice 600 million years ago (the “Snowball Earth” hypothesis), and then, for some reason, Earth got warmer, stimulating new life with warmth and nutrients to the ocean as the glaciers melted and dragged all the soils with them.⁴¹

From a tholonic perspective, the Cambrian Explosion challenges the gradualist Darwinian model of evolution as it shows complex life forms appearing in the fossil record with remarkable rapidity and without clear intermediate transitional forms. Precambrian fossils are mainly stromatolites, “sticky” microorganisms that were around for 3 billion years before the Cambrian explosion, and the dominant form of life for 2 billion years. Cambrian fossils show amazingly complex and evolved life forms. Yet there is a conspicuous absence of fossils showing intermediate evolutionary forms between pre-Cambrian microbial life and Cambrian life with brains, nervous systems, legs, eyes, etc.⁴²

Darwin himself, in his Origin of Species, acknowledged this problematic detail as a significant challenge to his “Theory of Descent”. His defense was that he hoped further discoveries would provide the missing evidence. However, subsequent discoveries have continued to reveal the same pattern of rapid diversification without the expected transitional forms, supporting Darwin’s gradual evolution theory less convincingly for long-term transitions than for short-term adaptations.

The tholonic perspective offers a different explanation: the Cambrian explosion represents a moment when tholonic intelligences actively created new archetypal forms at the conceptual level, which then instantiated rapidly into the material realm. In the tholonic realm, these archetypal patterns evolved from high entropy (undefined potential, chaotic possibility) toward low entropy (defined, ordered, ready for manifestation). Rather than waiting for random mutations to slowly accumulate over eons, these intelligences refined conceptual forms (nervous systems, eyes, complex body plans) through the tholonic process of moving from chaos to definition. When these archetypal patterns achieved sufficient definition and low enough entropy in the conceptual realm, they became capable of instantiating as coherent wholes into the material world. The instantiation happened at the interface where perfectly defined concepts (low entropy in the tholonic realm) entered the material realm and began their journey toward increasing material complexity (high entropy in the physical realm). From this view, the “explosion” was not a mystery requiring elaborate environmental explanations, but rather a creative convergence where multiple archetypal intelligences reached the necessary level of definition to instantiate nearly simultaneously. The physical causes (oxygen levels, environmental changes, genetic innovations) were not the true drivers but rather the material conditions that made the instantiation of these newly-defined archetypes possible.

While there are many theories, everyone agrees that whatever the causes, there were many interlinked and codependent processes. All these explanations are not really explanations but rather descriptions: this happened, then that happened, then another thing happened, causing more things to happen. But why did it happen? In every answer to that question, the “why” is simply a description of the effects of some other cause, and when we don’t know the cause, we hypothesize a cause that could explain the effects (which become the causes). Many of these theories of causes turn out to be correct, as we would expect, considering that this reality is made only of effects, which serve as causes for more effects.

The answer to “Why was there a Cambrian explosion?”, or any event for that matter, big or small, across all contexts, is that it was the most efficient and stable expression of energy at the time, arrived at through cooperation and/or conflict, that was compatible with the intentions and forces of all the contributing tholons and the contexts in which they were instantiated. The question we need to ask is what forces were at play. In the Cambrian explosion, what force could explain the spontaneous appearance of evolved life forms? In the jewel wasp’s ability to create a precise neurotransmitter cocktail, what force guides such molecular sophistication? In the cordyceps fungus knowing exactly where to position an ant for optimal spore dispersal, what intelligence choreographs such complex behavior? In the rabies virus strategically infecting salivary glands after the brain, what purposeful pattern emerges? The tholonic answer is that archetypal intelligences, operating at the conceptual level, express themselves through these material instantiations.

This is based on the human body resting metabolic rate of 1,300 calories over 24 hours, which is 54.16 cal/hour, or 0.015 cal/second. Converting to watts: 1,300 cal/day × 4.184 J/cal ÷ 86,400 sec/day = 62.93 watts. If the brain uses 20% of the body’s calories, that’s 12.6 watts; if complex, higher thought uses only 5% of brain energy, that is 0.625 watts.↩︎
Fonseca-Azevedo, Karina, and Suzana Herculano-Houzel. “Metabolic Constraint Imposes Tradeoff between Body Size and Number of Brain Neurons in Human Evolution.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109, no. 45 (2012): 18571–76. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1206390109. , https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1206390109↩︎
Seager, William, and Sean Allen-Hermanson. “Panpsychism.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 23 May 2001, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/panpsychism↩︎
Gardner, Howard. “Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences”. New York: BasicBooks, 2011.↩︎
Louis B. Rosenberg; July 20–24, 2015. “Human Swarms, a real-time method for collective intelligence.” Proceedings of the ECAL 2015: the 13th European Conference on Artificial Life. ECAL 2015: the 13th European Conference on Artificial Life. York, UK. (pp. 658-659). ASME. https://doi.org/10.1162/978-0-262-33027-5-ch117↩︎
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Gang, Fangli, Le Jiang, Yi Xiao, Jiwen Zhang, and Xiaodan Sun. “Multi‐Functional Magnetic Hydrogel: Design Strategies and Applications.” Nano Select 2, no. 12 (2021): 2291–2307. https://doi.org/10.1002/nano.202100139.↩︎
Kasiński, A., Zielińska-Pisklak, M., Oledzka, E., & Sobczak, M. (2019). “Smart Hydrogels – Synthetic Stimuli-Responsive Antitumor Drug Release Systems”. International Journal of Nanomedicine, 15, 4541-4572. https://doi.org/10.2147/IJN.S248987, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7326401/↩︎
Wang, Shuren, Zhiyi Wang, and Yanglong Hou. “Self‐Assembled Magnetic Nanomaterials: Versatile Theranostics Nanoplatforms for Cancer.” Aggregate 2, no. 2 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1002/agt2.18.↩︎
Turow, J. (1991). The Challenge of Inference in Interinstitutional Research on Mass Communication. Communication Research, 18(2), 222-239. https://doi.org/10.1177/009365091018002005. Note: Although this is not a reference to the official definition of the term “interinstitutionality”, which is too vague to be of any use here, it does provide an excellent explanation of what it is, how it works, and how it applies to mass communications.↩︎
Tam Hunt, Jonathan Schooler. “The ‘easy part’ of the Hard Problem: a resonance theory of consciousness.” Authorea. January 04, 2019. Preprint available at https://www.authorea.com/users/61793/articles/346253-the-easy-part-of-the-hard-problem-a-resonance-theory-of-consciousness?commit=81837c7bd6ad739b9597fc4e73eddcaa45d157ae or via Scientific American at https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-hippies-were-right-its-all-about-vibrations-man/↩︎
Jepsen, Kathryn. “Real Talk: Everything Is Made of Fields.” symmetry magazine. Accessed November 12, 2022. https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/july-2013/real-talk-everything-is-made-of-fields.↩︎
Chalmers, David John. “The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Theory of Conscious Experience”. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.↩︎
Green, James L.; Boardsen, Scott; Odenwald, Sten; Humble, John; Pazamickas, Katherine A. (1 January 2006). “Eyewitness reports of the great auroral storm of 1859”. Advances in Space Research. The Great Historical Geomagnetic Storm of 1859: A Modern Look. 38 (2): 145–154. doi: 10.1016/j.asr.2005.12.021.↩︎
Lim, Daniel (June 1, 2014). “Brain simulation and personhood: a concern with the Human Brain Project”. Ethics and Information Technology. 16 (2): 77–89. doi:10.1007/s10676-013-9330-5. ISSN 1572-8439.↩︎
Avila Negri Sergio M. C. “Robot as Legal Person: Electronic Personhood in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence”, Frontiers in Robotics and AI. Vol 8, 2021. https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frobt.2021.789327. DOI 10.3389/frobt.2021.789327, ISSN 2296-9144. “This paper seeks to investigate the proposal to create a legal (electronic) personhood for robots with artificial intelligence based on the European Parliament resolution with recommendations on Civil Law and Robotics.”↩︎
Spottiswoode, C. N., K. S. Begg, and C. M. Begg. “Reciprocal Signaling in Honeyguide-human Mutualism”. Science 353, no. 6297 (2016): 387-89. doi:10.1126/science.aaf4885.↩︎
Sheldrake, Rupert. “The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature”. New York: Times Books, 1988. See also Sheldrake, Rupert. “Morphic Resonance and Morphic Fields: An Introduction”. 2005. https://www.sheldrake.org/research/morphic-resonance/introduction↩︎
For a detailed account of how this tholonic approach to calculating π was discovered from the N-D-C trigram structure, see “An Introduction to the Tholonic I Ching”. Available in paperback and hardcover from Amazon.com, or as a free PDF download from tholonia.com.↩︎
Klebanoff, Aaron, “π in the Mandelbrot Set”, 2001, Fractals, 393-402, v09, n04, 10.1142/S0218348X01000828, https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0218348X01000828↩︎
Raab, Markus & Gigerenzer, Gerd. (2004). “Intelligence as Smart Heuristics. Cognition and Intelligence: Identifying the Mechanisms of the Mind”, 10.1017/CBO9780511607073.011.↩︎
Bradt, Steve. “Molecular Analysis Confirms T. Rex’s Evolutionary Link to Birds.” Harvard Gazette. Harvard Gazette, April 24, 2008. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/04/molecular-analysis-confirms-t-rexs-evolutionary-link-to-birds/.↩︎
Yoshida, Shosuke, et al. “A bacterium that degrades and assimilates poly(ethylene terephthalate)”. Science, vol. 351, no. 6278, 2016, pp. 1196-1199. DOI: 10.1126/science.aad6359↩︎
Willoughby, Rodney E. “Survival After Treatment of Rabies with Induction of Coma”. New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 352, no. 24, 2005, pp. 2508-2514. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa050382. As of 2025, fewer than 30 documented cases of survival from symptomatic rabies exist worldwide, nearly all requiring intensive medical intervention.↩︎
Jackson, Alan C. “Pathogenesis of Rabies Virus Infection”. Rabies: Scientific Basis of the Disease and Its Management, 3rd ed., Academic Press, 2013, pp. 299-349. DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-12-396547-9.00009-0↩︎
Milius, Susan. “How Roaches Fight off Wasps That Turn Their Victims into Zombies.” Science News, 14 Nov. 2018, https://www.sciencenews.org/article/how-roaches-fight-wasps-turn-their-victims-zombies↩︎
Gal, Ram, and Frederic Libersat. “A Wasp Manipulates Neuronal Activity in the Sub-Esophageal Ganglion to Decrease the Drive for Walking in Its Cockroach Prey.” PLoS ONE, vol. 5, no. 4, 2010, e10019. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0010019↩︎
Herzner, Gudrun, et al. “Larvae of the Parasitoid Wasp Ampulex compressa Sanitize Their Host, the American Cockroach, with a Blend of Antimicrobials.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 110, no. 4, 2013, pp. 1369-1374. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1213384110↩︎
Hughes, David P., et al. “Behavioral mechanisms and morphological symptoms of zombie ants dying from fungal infection”. BMC Ecology, vol. 11, no. 13, 2011. DOI: 10.1186/1472-6785-11-13. The study documents the specific height (25 cm) and environmental conditions required for optimal fungal fruiting body development.↩︎
Fredericksen, Maridel A., et al. “Three-dimensional visualization and a deep-learning model reveal complex fungal parasite networks in behaviorally manipulated ants”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 114, no. 47, 2017, pp. 12590-12595. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1711673114↩︎
Tuli, Hardeep Singh, et al. “Pharmacological and therapeutic potential of Cordyceps with special reference to Cordycepin”. 3 Biotech, vol. 4, no. 1, 2014, pp. 1-12. DOI: 10.1007/s13205-013-0121-9↩︎
Flegr, Jaroslav. “Influence of latent Toxoplasma infection on human personality, physiology and morphology: pros and cons of the Toxoplasma-human model in studying the manipulation hypothesis”. Journal of Experimental Biology, vol. 216, 2013, pp. 127-133. DOI: 10.1242/jeb.073635. Global seroprevalence of toxoplasmosis varies widely by region, with estimates ranging from 10-80%, with approximately 30% being a commonly cited global average.↩︎
Jaroslav Flegr ,Pavlína Lenochová,Zdeněk Hodný,Marta Vondrová, “Fatal Attraction Phenomenon in Humans – Cat Odour Attractiveness Increased for Toxoplasma-Infected Men While Decreased for Infected Women”, November 8, 2011, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0001389↩︎
Flegr, J., Havlícek, J., Kodym, P. et al. “Increased risk of traffic accidents in subjects with latent toxoplasmosis: a retrospective case-control study”. BMC Infect Dis 2, 11 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2334-2-11↩︎
Dalimi A, Abdoli A. “Latent toxoplasmosis and human”. Iran J Parasitol. 2012;7(1):1-17. PMID: 23133466; PMCID: PMC3488815. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3488815/↩︎
Kristoffer Sølvsten Burgdorf, Betina B. Trabjerg, Marianne Giørtz Pedersen, Janna Nissen, Karina Banasik, Ole Birger Pedersen, Erik Sørensen, Kaspar René Nielsen, Margit Hørup Larsen, Christian Erikstrup, Peter Bruun-Rasmussen, David Westergaard, Lise Wegner Thørner, Henrik Hjalgrim, Helene Martina Paarup, Søren Brunak, Carsten B. Pedersen, E. Fuller Torrey, Thomas Werge, Preben Bo Mortensen, Robert H. Yolken, Henrik Ullum, “Large-scale study of Toxoplasma and Cytomegalovirus shows an association between infection and serious psychiatric disorders”, Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, Volume 79, 2019, Pages 152-158, ISSN 0889-1591, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbi.2019.01.026.↩︎
Blackburn, Tim M, Céline Bellard, and Anthony Ricciardi. “Alien versus Native Species as Drivers of Recent Extinctions.” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 17, no. 4 (2019): 203–7. https://doi.org/10.1002/fee.2020.↩︎
Ashby, Ben, and Kayla C. King. “Friendly foes: The evolution of host protection by a parasite”, Evolution Letters, vol. 1, no. 4, 2017, pp. 211-221. https://doi.org/10.1002/evl3.19↩︎
Caddy, Eileen, and Dorothy Maclean. “The Findhorn Garden: Pioneering a New Vision of Man and Nature in Cooperation”. Harper & Row, 1975. The Findhorn Foundation’s documented horticultural achievements in poor soil conditions have been studied by agricultural experts, though the spiritual communication aspect remains a matter of belief rather than scientific verification.↩︎
Marshall, Charles R. “Explaining the Cambrian ‘Explosion’ of Animals”. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, vol. 34, 2006, pp. 355-384. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.earth.33.031504.103001↩︎
Hoffman, Paul F., and Daniel P. Schrag. “The Snowball Earth Hypothesis: Testing the Limits of Global Change”. Terra Nova, vol. 14, no. 3, 2002, pp. 129-155. DOI: 10.1046/j.1365-3121.2002.00408.x↩︎
Meyer, Stephen C. “The Cambrian Explosion: Biology’s Big Bang”. In Darwinism, Design, and Public Education, Michigan State University Press, 2003, pp. 323-402. Note: While this source presents an Intelligent Design perspective that mainstream science disputes, it accurately documents the fossil evidence gap that presents challenges to gradualist evolutionary models.↩︎

10: MIND

The universal machine of creation

Keywords: coherence, intelligence, archetypal patterns, instantiation, entropy flow, intentional causation, tholonic intelligence, conceptual-material interface

Coherence

Consciousness

Key 67: Consciousness is a coherent form of A&I.

Key 68: Matter and consciousness is an instance of A&I in a limited context.

Intelligence

Key 69: Intelligence exists in anything with a sustainable energy pattern.

Key 70: “Logic” is a model based on cause and effect that requires justification that adheres to laws based on observable reality.