Glossary
actuality: the world experienced sensorially. Contrast reality.
adaptation (evolutionary biology): the teleological process of adjusting to ecological circumstance.
algorithm: a step-by-step procedure, often employed for mathematical problems. Compare heuristic.
amusement: a pleasurable diversion; entertainment.
analyze: to ascertain and separate an entity (material or abstract) into constituent parts or elements; to determine essential features. Contrast synthesize.
animism: the doctrine that that there is no separation between the physical and spiritual world, and that a vital energetic force is inherent in all of Nature. Compare vitalism.
arms race: (the idea of) 2 parties escalating their advantage in interacting with or competing against each other.
autonomic: acting independently of volition.
autopoiesis: a dynamic of self-sustaining activity; a system capable of maintaining and reproducing itself. A biological cell maintaining itself is an example of autopoiesis. Compare homeostasis.
autotroph: an organism that makes its own food. Autotrophs are lithotrophs or photoautotrophs. Lithotrophs consume electrons from inorganic chemicals for energy. Phototrophs take light as their primary energy source. Contrast heterotroph.
awareness: the quality of being conscious in the present moment. See consciousness.
behave: to act or react in a certain way.
being (noun): a living hofragy-tennet with consciousness and a mind-body, characterized by its interactions. Compare self.
belief: a habit of the mind to axiomatically treat ideas as true; confidence in abstractions as real.
bioelement: a planetary ecological element. The bioelements include the atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, and biota.
biota: the organisms in an environment.
bliss: the feeling of joyful contentment which emanates from connection with Ĉonsciousness. Bliss is symptomatic of enlightenment. Compare happiness.
boson: a quantum that carries a fundamental force. Contrast fermion.
categorize (aka classify): to arrange or organize via criteria.
category: a group of related concepts.
causality (aka (noun) cause and effect, (adjective) cause-and-effect): the idea that one phenomenon provokes a succeeding phenomenon. Contrast correlation.
cause (verb) (physics): to effect; to bring about.
cognition: the process of understanding, involving both awareness and judgment. Compare mentation.
coherence: the intelligent interaction behind Nature. Like Ĉonsciousness, coherence localizes.
coherence consciousness: the 6th state of consciousness, with awareness of the unity of Nature. Compare enlightenment, realization.
Collective: people who follow their biological urges as natural imperative. The Collective are slaves to their minds. As believers in matterism and in taking existence at face value, the Collective are naïve realists.
concept (aka idea): an abstract construct involving discriminatory categorization.
conceptualize, conceptualization: mentally resolving perceptions into a concept.
conscious: thoughts, emotions, and desires of which one is aware. Compare subconscious.
consciousness: the platform for awareness in an individual life constituent, such as a protein, cell, or organism. The 4 nominal states of human consciousness are awake, asleep, dreaming, and transcendence. The 3 elevated states of consciousness are enlightenment, coherence consciousness, and realization. A person may be in multiple states of consciousness simultaneously (enlightenment is essentially the sustained state of transcendence while awake). Compare Cönsciousness.
Cönsciousness: the unified field of consciousness. Cönsciousness naturally localizes into individualized consciousnesses. Compare consciousness.
consistent: recognizable from recall as similar.
construal (noun): an interpretation; an exegesis.
construal level theory: a 1998 psychology theorem by Nira Liberman and Yaacov Trope that relates psychospace to objects and events as concrete or abstract. Things seem closer or farther depending upon personal involvement with them (physical distance aside). People tend to think concretely about things perceived as close, but increasingly abstractly about things at a psychological distance. In this context, abstract means high-level: conceptually, not specifically, whereas concrete means detailed (low-level).
construe (verb): construct an interpretation.
consume: to engage in via sensation; to be engrossed in.
context: a paradigmatic framework.
correlation: the fact that multiple phenomena coincide. Contrast causality.
courage: firm intention.
criterion (plural: criteria): a trait or feature for characterization and categorization; a metric, principle, or rule for judgment.
daedal: skillful, artistic, intricate.
daydream: an indulged reverie.
deceive: to present a false impression.
deduction (logic): the method of inferring a conclusion about particulars from general principles. Contrast induction.
dissociation (psychology): the conscious state of feeling separate from the mind-body.
dogma: an established opinion or body of doctrines.
dualism: the metaphysical belief that reality is bifurcated between the physical and the mental (or spiritual). Contrast monism.
ecology: an interactive interface; patterns of relations among entities; as a subdiscipline of biology, patterns of interrelations between life forms (e.g., cells, organisms) and their environment (including other organisms); more broadly, the relations between bioelements.
ecosystem: the community of organisms (biota) in a biome (similar living environment), and the abiotic (non-living) elements within the area.
egene: the idea of an energetic hereditary unit which conveys all the information needed to create a trait or biological effect. Nucleic acids alone cannot explain heredity. Compare gene.
emergence: actuality becoming phenomenal on an infinitesimal moment-by-moment basis.
emotion: a feeling evolved by cognition into a sustained state.
empathy: an imaginative projection of understanding about another creature’s frame of mind, whether perspective or mood.
empiricism (epistemology): the presumption that knowledge derives solely from sensory experience.
empiricism (philosophy of science): the belief that Nature may be entirely explained by physical forces.
energy (physics): the idea of an immaterial force acting upon or producing matter. Energy is characterized relatively and by type (how it affects matter). Energy manifests only through its effect on matter. Though the foundational construct of existence, energy itself does not exist. As matter is made of energy, this fact tidily proves energyism.
energyism: the monistic doctrine that Nature is a figment of the mind. Energyism differentiates between actuality and reality. Whereas actuality is phenomenal, reality is noumenal. The basic theory of energyism is that, in concert with a unified field of Ĉonsciousness, an organizing interaction of coherence creates Nature, which appears diverse yet integral. Contrast matterism.
enlightenment (aka quietude or quiet consciousness): the state of consciousness with clarity of mind via transcendence. In enlightenment there is intrinsic contentment, accompanied by an eminently sensible perspective on life (and death). Compare coherence consciousness, realization.
entertainment: stimulation from experience not wholly expected.
entanglement (physics): distinct phenomena behaving synchronously. Entanglement defies locality.
enzyme: a protein that facilitates the activities of other proteins or substrates. Enzymes typically act as catalysts.
epigenetics: a heredity mechanism via gene regulation, without changing the structure of the gene involved (that is, without genetic mutation).
event: a perceived process with an outcome.
evil: a behavior which is morally vacant and environmentally destructive, where the environment may be mental, social, and/or physical.
evolution: a distinctive change across successive generations of a population.
existence: corporeality, including both matter and energy. See actuality, manifestation, Nature, phenomenon.
experience (noun): a conceptualized event.
fact: recall of an experienced event. Compare real.
faith: belief in absence of fact.
fermion: a quantum of matter. Contrast boson.
field: an energy associated with a spacetime point or region.
fignorance: fact ignorance. Compare pignorance. See ignorance.
food web: the energy production and consumption interrelations between biota in an ecosystem.
fractal: a set of scale-invariant, self-similar, iterative patterns.
framework (psychology): a conceptual scheme or system.
framing (psychology): perceiving a situation within a certain context or from a specific perspective.
framing effect: bias from the context in which a situation is considered, the bias typically involving personal gain or loss.
gene: the idea that nucleic acids instruct production of an organic molecule, typically a protein. Genes do not exist: they are merely a construal. The actuality of genetics is more intricate than supposed by matterist geneticists, as heritable bioproduct information is stored energetically, with organic molecules as illusory material substrates. Compare egene.
genetics: the study of heredity and variation in life forms at the molecular level.
God: the myth of an immortal supreme being who is omniscient and typically omnipotent, albeit often inexplicably reserved in exercising such power in moral ways comprehensible to mere mortals. The concept of God is object orientation run amok: one of many delusions construed by believing in what is conceived as contrasted to actuality, and what reasonably may be inferred from known facts.
gyre: a conceptual framework treating a physical system as a dynamic vortex. A gyre is characterized by its structure, qualities, thermodynamics, and interactions. See tensor.
happiness: a mood of well-being. Compare bliss.
heterotroph: an organism that cannot produce its own food. All animals are heterotrophs. Compare autotroph.
heuristic (psychology): a simple, efficient rule employed to form judgments, solve problems, or make decisions. Compare algorithm.
Higgs boson: a boson which, as a field, imbues other quanta with mass. See Higgs field.
Higgs field: according quantum physics’ Standard Model, the universal field that imparts mass. Quanta hypothetically swim in the Higgs field, interacting at different strengths, and so maintain distinct masses, or are massless if the Higgs field fails to impress. The quantum representing the Higgs field is the Higgs boson. See Higgs mechanism.
Higgs mechanism: the continuous process whereby quanta acquire mass. The Higgs mechanism exemplifies the basic mechanism by which Nature is composed: universal fields localizing, with local fields quantizing into particulate form. The exposition of Ĉonsciousness works the same way: from universal field to localized consciousness.
hofragy (a portmanteau of hologram, fractal, and gyre; pronounced hō-fraj-eye): an interactive (gyral) holofractal.
holism: the idea that systems and their properties should be viewed holistically (from the perspective of being a whole), not just as a collection of components. Contrast reductionism. See synergy.
holofractal: a scale-invariant pattern that is self-similar but not selfsame to other holofractals of the same type.
holographic: semblances where components reflect the whole.
hologram (aka holograph): an image made from recording interference patterns. As the pattern in a hologram is scale-invariant, each portion of a hologram has the same information content as the whole hologram.
homeostasis (biology): a regulatory process by which an organism strives for holistic health. Compare autopoiesis.
homeostasis (physics): a tendency toward stability within a system.
ignorance: a state of unknowing. There are 2 types of ignorance: fact-ignorance (fignorance) and perspective-ignorance (pignorance). Fignorance is not knowing the salient facts of a subject. Pignorance arises from incognizance of reality. The casual use of ignorance in this book refers to pignorance.
illusion: mistaken perception; something deceptive by a false impression.
immaterialism: the doctrine that materiality is illusory. See energyism.
induction (logic): the method of inferring a generalized conclusion from particulars. Contrast deduction.
infer: to derive by reasoning or implication; to conclude from premises or facts.
instinct: precocious knowledge.
intelligence: an attribution for behaving appropriately; the process of gathering and analyzing information.
introspection (aka metacognition): (the capability of) reflectively examining one’s own thoughts and feelings. Compare mindfulness.
intuition: direct apprehension. Contrast phenomenon.
learning: the process of constructing a conceptual framework.
locality (physics): the idea that an object can only be influenced by its immediate surroundings. Contrast nonlocality.
localization (physics): the process of locally confining or effecting a result from a universal field.
logic: the process of chaining concepts together – from a premise to a conclusion (inference) – in a way that the linkages may be agreeable (especially to others, else socially considered illogic).
love: adoration of a concept.
macromolecule: a large compound molecule, commonly created by combination of smaller subunits. Nucleic acids (e.g., DNA), proteins, carbohydrates, and lipids (fats) are macromolecules.
manifestation: an outward perceptible expression of Nature. Compare phenomenon.
mantra: a resonant vibration used to attain transcendence.
mathematics: the systematic treatment of relations between symbolic entities.
matter (physics): something with mass, constructed of fermions. See energy.
matterism: the monistic belief that reality is made of matter. Matterism ignores energy as elemental and supposes that the mind is a figment of something substantial. See naïve realism. Contrast energyism.
meditation: a practice intended to achieve transcendence.
memory: mental storage of past events.
mentation: mental activity.
methodology: a body of methods, procedures, working concepts, postulates, and rules employed by a discipline of study. Note that all disciplines are knowledge oriented.
mind: an intangible organ for symbolic processing.
mind-body: the mind and body as an integral life form.
mind-body problem: the unsolvable inquiry into the functional interface between the intangible mind and the physical body.
mindfulness (aka mindfulness meditation): ongoing awareness of one’s own thoughts and mental states; the practice of paying attention to the prattles of the mind, which has ignorantly been popularized as a form of meditation when it is nothing of the sort.
modus operandi: a manner of operating.
monism: the metaphysical principle that there is a singular reality, either matterism or energyism. Contrast dualism.
monotheistic idealism: the idea that Nature is within the mind of God.
morality: the differentiation between social right and wrong based upon fairness. The philosophy of morality is ethics. A moral code is a creed of morality.
naïve realism (aka direct realism, commonsense realism, scientific realism): the belief that actuality as perceived is reality.
Nature: the exhibition of existence. See coherence.
nature (of): the essence; the basic constitution.
nattermind: the involuntary part of the mind that acts as an independent agent. Contrast willmind.
natural philosophy: the study of Nature from a holistic perspective; the common methodology of inquiry into Nature prior to the 17th century. Contrast science.
natural selection: a discredited hypothesis of evolutionary descent by Charles Darwin, who posited that randomness slowly led to competitive speciation.
neurobiology (aka neuroscience): a pseudoscience that equates nerve cell activity with mentation.
nonlocality: entanglement of objects at some distance from each other. Contrast locality.
noumenon: outside of existence; not phenomenal. A noumenon is beyond perception, as contrasted to phenomena.
object: something manifest as cohesive matter.
objectivity: the idea that Nature and reality are independent of consciousness. Contrast showtivity.
paradigm: a theoretical framework.
perceive, perception: mentally integrating sensory input (sensation) using memory. Perception is a 3-stage process: 1) turn a sensation into a symbolic representation, 2) identify sensed symbols using memory and categorization, then 3) derive the meaning of the identified symbols, especially regarding affinity or avoidance. See conceptualization.
phenomenal: known through perception. Contrast intuition.
phenomenon (plural: phenomena): a perceptible event. See actuality. Contrast noumenon.
philosophy: a set of consistent definitions pertaining to a system. The term philosophy derives from the ancient Greek for “love of wisdom.”
physics: the study of matter and its patterns of motion, with the intent of understanding how the universe behaves.
pignorance (perspective-ignorance): a wrong worldview from not knowing the nature of existence. Compare fignorance. See ignorance, naïve realism.
precocious knowledge: inborn knowledge. Precocious knowledge is a telltale of energyism, as it cannot be explained via materiality.
principle (philosophy of science): a conceptual construct explaining some countenance of Nature.
protein: a complex organic macromolecule by which living bodies are intelligently built. See enzyme.
psychological distance: the mentally construed remove from an object, person, or event. See psychospace.
psychospace: the mental, as contrasted to physical, spatial and temporal environment. See psychological distance.
quantum (physics) (plural: quanta): an infinitesimal chunk of ripple in a localized energy field that appears particulate (via quantization).
quasiparticle: an emergent approximation of fermionic behavior. Localized subatomic energies which mimic bosons are termed collective excitations.
quietude: the state of consciousness characterized by being awake with a quiet mind – nattermind subdued.
random (adjective): the idea that a system lacks order.
real: that which is, as contrasted to what manifests. See truth.
reality: that which necessarily is, phenomenal or noumenonal. Contrast actuality.
realization (aka unity consciousness): an enlightened state of consciousness with an abiding experience of the unicity of Nature. Compare enlightenment, coherence consciousness.
reasoning: making sense of experience and applying logic.
reductionism: the absurd idea that a complex dynamic system can be understood by ascertaining and analyzing constituent elements. Reductionism requires that the something can never be more than the sum of its parts. Reductionists explain biological processes in the same way that chemists and physicists interpret inanimate matter. In adhering to empirical cause-and-effect, reductionism is a tool of matterism. See synergy. Contrast holism.
religion: a shared belief system encompassing the nature of the universe and life, commonly belied by evidence. Religions are frequently faith-based, typically dogmatic, and usually involve supernatural agents (gods). Contrast science.
Romanesco broccoli: the flower bud of Brassica oleracea, notable for its fractal appearance, its relative crunchiness, and delicate, nutty flavor.
saprotroph: an organism that consumes decaying organic matter. Compare autotroph, heterotroph.
scale (mathematics, statistics, physics, economics): a relative size or dimensionality.
scale invariance (mathematics, statistics, physics, economics): a feature which does not change because of any variable representing scale, such as length or energy intensity.
science: the study of Nature from a strictly empirical standpoint. Contrast natural philosophy. See scientific method.
scientific method: a set of techniques for investigating phenomena, ostensibly involving careful observation before guessing what is going on, which is known as forming a theory. Guessing prior to intensive observation is making a hypothesis.
Scientific Revolution (1543–1687): a label by historians to ascribe the era in which modern science emerged. The 1543 posthumous publication of Copernicus’ essay on heliocentrism is commonly cited as the start date.
self: an individual, perceived as unchanging in fundamental character. Compare being.
sensate, sensation: receiving stimuli from sensory organs for collation and interpretation via perception.
sentience (aka sentiency): conscious witnessing without cognitive engagement. Sentience is the ability of consciousness to perceive thoughts and awareness itself. See introspection.
shared subjectivity: the principle that shared subjective perceptions creates an illusion of objectivity via showtivity.
showtivity: the seeming objectivity of Nature via a shared experiential platform provided by Ĉonsciousness and coherence as an ordering principle for the perception of Nature.
skepticism: the doctrine that all knowledge is uncertain at best.
spirituality: a subjective sense of Nature that transcends purely physiological and material phenomena.
stolid: insensible.
subconscious (aka unconscious): mentation that one is not aware of (not conscious of); below the threshold of awareness. Compare conscious.
subjectivity: the idea that manifestation is necessarily an experience of individual consciousness. Contrast objectivity.
sunk cost fallacy: an inapt framing effect that time or other resources spent in an endeavor are an investment which should earn a reward.
symbol: an abstraction that signifies something; a representation of a concept.
synergy: an interaction of elements that, when combined, produces a total effect greater than the sum of the individual contributions. Contrast reductionism.
synthesize: to form (a material or abstraction) by combining parts or elements. Contrast analyze.
system: an assemblage of interdependent or interacting constituent concepts that form a whole.
teleology (evolutionary biology): the theory that adaptation is goal oriented.
teleology (philosophy): the doctrine that final causes (ends or purposes) exist. Socrates, Plato, and Immanuel Kant argued in favor of teleology.
tennet (aka tensor network): a network of tensors.
tensor: a geometric object describing linear relations between other geometric entities (vectors, scalars, tensors). A tensor is a geometric entity intertwined with other tensors. See gyre, tensor network.
tensor network (aka tennet): a network of tensors.
theory: fact-based explanation about the relations between concepts.
truth: conformity with reality. Compare theory.
transcendence: the state of consciousness where the mind is quiet while the body is resting but receptive to stimuli.
vibration: a periodic oscillation about an equilibrium.
vitalism (biology): the doctrine that there is a vital energy specific to living organisms, distinct from chemical and physical forces; a fact generally rejected by modern scientists.
vitalism (natural philosophy): the doctrine that life is essentially distinct from inanimate matter. Compare animism.
willmind: volitional mentation. Contrast nattermind.
worldview (aka Weltanschauung): a cognitive orientation toward life and Nature.
