Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy

Weavings

Elia Gonnella — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Contemporary ontology faces a fundamental challenge: how can entities exist in relation to their environments without reducing them to mere relations or isolated substances? This paper develops a spatial ontology that goes beyond the relationism-substantialism debate by examining how entities relate to their surroundings through what I term “spatial weavings.” Drawing on phenomenological analysis and biological examples, I argue that entities exist through dynamic spatial engagements that are neither reducible to network effects nor explicable as interactions between pre-given objects. Using Heidegger’s analysis of spatial existence and Sartre’s inversion of essence and existence, I demonstrate that spatiality is not a container for entities, but the fundamental structure through which entities become what they are. This approach contributes to post-correlationist ontology by grounding ontology in the concrete spatial practices through which entities encounter their environments. The paper concludes by extending this analysis beyond human existence to develop a general theory of spatial being that encompasses biological, technical, and material entities.

World as Sediments

Reza Tavakol — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Sediment as a concept and metaphor has been employed to characterise a large variety of processes and structures, ranging in nature from material, to social and conceptual. The prototypical notion of sediment used in such characterisations often mirrors that of geological sediments. Despite their variety and ubiquitousness here on Earth, geological sediments are unduly restrictive and special in nature. In particular, they are solid, fossilised, layered and no longer in a continued state of formation.

Here I consider the concept of sediments from a wider, cosmological, perspective by treating them as spatiotemporal outcomes of interrelated nonlinear dynamical processes, on vast scales of space and time. Such sediments are generally non-solid, non-fossilised, ongoing and able to impact the processes that are giving rise to them. They can take multitudes of forms, including sediments that are not accumulative/additive and layered as in the case of geological sediments, but subtractive and/or non-layered/dispersive or a combinations of these — as well as others that are in principle closed to observers, such as black holes. There are also sediments which are non-material, such as those in electromagnetic fields (light), including those that are manifestly spatiotemporal.

Seen from this perspective the observable Universe could be looked upon as an enormously complex and interrelated web of diverse and novel sedimentary processes and structures coming into being and withering away — often involving chaos and contingency and at times undergoing cataclysmic metamorphosis, which could in the process drastically impact the environments that gave rise to them, altering their future histories. They generally possess multiple origins and can occur on vast range of scales of space and time, extending from the beginnings of the Universe soon after the Big Bang to its very far future, which is presently unknown, including ourselves as biological beings and observers.

The concept of sediment has also been used as a metaphor to conceptualize various social and conceptual constructs, such as geometrical concepts — which as we shall see can also be extended to the case of Mathematics as a whole.

A key distinguishing feature of sediments is how they relate to time, not only in terms of their lifetimes, which can take a vast range, including sediments with lifetimes enormously longer than the present age of the Universe, as well as mathematical sediments that appear future eternal — but importantly also by the way they encode time: explicitly (as in layered sediments), implicitly (as in non-layered dispersive sediments), and implicitly with ruptures (as in cataclysmic sediments).

The generalised notion of sediment introduced here provides a far richer framework to conceptualise the sedimentary concept and metaphor in enormously diverse settings, while emphasising the interconnectedness of sediments, their multiple origins, as well as their ongoing, potentially cataclysmic and contingent natures. It also raises fundamental questions regarding their ultimate fates in a transient Universe.

Schopenhauer, Radical Entanglement, and Futural Ecology

Robert Alan Hanna, Otto Paans — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In this essay, we argue that Schopenhauer is an ecological thinker, and more specifically that Schopenhauer’s ecological thought is future-oriented, without becoming fatalistic; it is dark in the sense of being reserved, without falling into despair; and it points towards an ecological attitude characterized by the full realization of our limits, without being quietist. Schopenhauer’s philosophical ecology deals with the great unfolding of the cosmic household (oikos). It shows that ecology cannot be equated with nature conservation or a harmonious world-image, but with embracing a world-image that radically entangles us within it. This leads to the necessity of embracing our limits, without falling into nihilism, alarmism, solutionism, or quietism, yet remaining fully cognizant of our epistemic limitations and representational capacities. This attitude is natural limitationism. Conversely, longtermism thought flattens out this idea. It denies our radical entanglement with the world, proposing salvific technology as the solution to current ecological problems. We argue for adopting a humble and receptive attitude of creative piety, coupled with the full existential realization of our radical entanglement with the biosphere, rendering longtermist thinking irrelevant. Schopenhauer’s philosophical ecology provides a viable organicist alternative to address our current biospheric crises.

The Life-sustenance Hypothesis

Irina Salmi — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper develops the life-sustenance hypothesis to explain the multifaceted phenomenon of the human-nature connection. It is based on an interpretation of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s philosophy brought into contemporary times via recent multidisciplinary research and theoretical underpinnings. Rousseau suggested that humans have two innate, instinctive drives he called amour-de-soi and pitié—a self-preservative drive, and its enlargement, an inclination to help other living beings in distress. The life-sustenance hypothesis is rooted in a systems biological framework situating humans as interconnected parts within a nested system of life. Corresponding to Rousseau’s drives, this interconnectedness is suggested to give rise to the dynamics between two life-preserving orientations that guide our manners-of-being in the world: a self-sustaining and a ‘life-sustaining’ orientation shared by all organisms, albeit manifested differently. The experience of nature connectedness, along with altruistic impulses, are proposed to be human manifestations of the life-sustaining orientation. Moreover, in line with Rousseau’s philosophy, it is posited that the modern, individualistic lifestyle has given rise to an imbalance between these orientations leading to problems in prosociality, proenvironmentalism, and overall well-being. One means by which to regain balanced manners-of-being might be to enhance our nature connectedness. Possible physiological indicators for the hypothesis are explored.

Interdependence and Identity:

Bennett B. Gilbert — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The twin concepts in the title will be introduced in the contexts of the philosophy of history and of philosophical personalism, as distinct from (though related to) their uses as logical and metaphysical categories. Overviews of varieties of philosophy of history and of basic principles I employ are foundations of the argument. Concepts, or ideas, in general have, I argue, real existence through the way that personal agents use them in creating the histories of human relations. I introduce a Personalist account, which has a more thoroughly diachronic character. Further remarks on the power of ideas to create relations expands this idea into the key claim: that urgency derived from interdependent human relations links historical and moral considerations. Interdependence and identity are then considered in terms of systems theory, notably biological autopoiesis and panpsychism. The value of all this appears in terms of relationships in moral life and, in conclusion, in an understanding of the connections between moral philosophy and philosophy of history.

Protection of the Earth as a Unique Life Form

Alexey Anisimov, Anatoliy Ryzhenkov — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The article presents a philosophical and legal analysis of the concept of the Earth as a living organism in the context of modern international environmental law. The article argues for the need for a fundamental rethinking of the environmental law concept in terms of the global environmental and pandemic crises on the basis of an in-depth study of the Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock, the concepts of the biosphere and noosphere proposed by Vladimir Vernadsky as well as the ideas of Lynn Margulis, Dorion Sagan and other authors. The emphasis is placed on the philosophical aspects of international and national law related to the transition from the anthropocentric to the ecocentric paradigm. It is substantiated that it is necessary to recognize the Earth as a unique life form having its own interests and value that do not depend on man. The authors note that the coronavirus pandemic, the climate crisis and other global challenges require the international community to form a new philosophical and legal paradigm based on respect for the integrity of the biosphere and the understanding of the interdependence of man and nature.

The Principle of Art (in Practice)

Nat Trimarchi — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper disputes the generalised definition of ‘aesthetic practice’ which leads deconstructive postmodern ‘aestheticians’ to equate aesthetic activities (eg., gardening, hair-braiding) with art-making. Reviving an understanding of Art’s single unifying Principle is a necessary precondition for restoring the meaning of an artistic practice. I describe its ancient origins, its disappearance in modernity, and reconstruct its defining criteria, showing why art cannot be confused with just any ‘cultural practice’ whereby one’s experience of the ‘general aesthetic’ can by merely mimicking Nature elicit familiar empathic responses reflectively. I argue very little real art is being made today, and AI is perfectly suited to making what has replaced it: ‘cultural artefact’. In reconstructing this Principle, I show why artistic practice cannot be predicated merely upon theories of beauty/pleasure; but rather on what Aristotle deemed the ‘higher pleasure’ of making Reason (merging beauty with truth, and freedom with necessity). This overcomes Kant’s reflective aesthetic paradigm that engendered the misguided ‘experientialism’ dominating modern/postmodern “art” - undergirding an ‘artworld’ of mainly anti-Art (in what Bernard Stiegler calls the ‘catastrophe’ of modern aesthetic experience driven by the rise of ‘technicism’). A process for applying the Principle’s criteria is briefly outlined, demonstrating how to distinguish a ‘phenomenological experience’ from ‘ordinary experience’, and thus a genuinely poetic discourse from any other form of speculative discourse. Uncovering the Principle’s origins in Aristotle’s natural science (and his discernment of ‘making’ from ‘acting’ in technê), separating normative from theoretical aesthetics, and unveiling art’s ‘objective’ meaningfulness in any artwork’s phenomenology, reaffirms why art’s relation to the Person (its ‘anthropological phenomenology’) is of primary concern to aesthetes. I conclude with how the purpose of all inquiry into aesthetics is made more meaningful by reviving the Principle of Art, and why this essentially renders theoretical aesthetics redundant.

Information is Not a Third Fundamental Quantity of the Universe

Jaime F. Cárdenas-García, William B. Miller, Jr., František Baluška — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The concept of information gained significant importance in the mid-twentieth century when Claude E. Shannon introduced the mathematical theory of communication. This groundbreaking development marked the birth of information science and the dawn of the 'Information Age'. The fascination with the concept of information spurred its application across various scientific disciplines, leading to the widely accepted yet flawed notion that information is a fundamental quantity of the universe, alongside matter and energy. Contrary to this view, more than twenty years after Shannon's proposal, Gregory Bateson defined information as the detection of a difference which makes a difference (to someone). This perspective emphasizes the role of information in the actions of living beings, as they assess changes in their environment to enhance their well-being. The concept of infoautopoiesis, or information self-production, describes a self-referential, recursive process of sensation-information-action intrinsic to living beings. This process underscores the importance of information for living organisms and illustrates how Shannon's information theory fits into this broader context. In summary, this paper challenges the validity of the widely accepted but flawed concept of information as a fundamental quantity of the universe.

Quantum Discontinuity and Metaphysical Foundations

Garry Seabrook — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The discovery of quantum discontinuity at the limit of empirical observation reveals that the most basic features of reality may not be causally determined but instead emerge from a non-causal basis. The traditional a priori application of first principles has long stood in the way of this possibility. Once this inherited assumption is suspended, it becomes evident that the classical framework is both unsustainable and circular: it presupposes the very continuity it seeks to ground. Recognising this invites a reassessment of how intelligibility itself arises, pointing toward an ontic foundation in which causality emerges from non-causality as the starting point for being itself. This relation manifests ontologically in experience as the complementarity of discontinuity and continuity, grounding philosophical explanation.

Spacetime Composition, Intuition and Familiarity

Yazan Freij — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Recent approaches to quantum gravity suggest that spacetime is not a fundamental entity but rather emerges from a non-spatiotemporal structure. To conceptualise how spacetime might emerge, it has been suggested that we should think of spacetime as being mereologically composed of spacetime regions which are in turn composed of non- spatiotemporal parts. However, Baron (2021) has argued that even if spacetime composition can be shown to be coherent, it would still be different from how we ordinarily conceive the mereology of concrete objects, and thus spacetime composition is unfamiliar. In this paper, I argue that this argument rests on the false premise that our intuitions apply equally to all domains. I then reformulate four principles that are taken to be intuitive for mereological composition. In their original formulations, these principles are violated by spacetime composition. But once reformulated, the tension with spacetime composition dissolves. I also show that these reformulations still satisfy our intuitions in the domain of everyday life but also extend beyond it into other domains. As a result, I maintain that spacetime composition is at least somewhat familiar with potential that its familiarity will grow in the future. Therefore, there is no reason to reject it as unfamiliar.

Quantum Phenomenology of Action

Nobuchika Yamaki — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper develops a formal phenomenology of human action by integrating insights from phenomenology, predictive-processing neuroscience, and quantum formalism. It argues that action does not unfold as a linear sequence of prediction, execution, and correction but as a temporally superposed field in which these components coexist. To capture this simultaneity, the paper introduces a non-commutative operator model—ψₐ = α|P⟩ + β|E⟩ + γ|C⟩—representing action as a superposition of predictive, executive, and corrective states. Non-zero commutators ([Ê, P̂] ≠ 0) express the contextual dependence of temporal order, while measurement-like collapse corresponds to the emergence of determinate outcomes in lived experience. The framework thus reconceptualizes embodied agency as coherence within indeterminacy, offering a logical bridge between phenomenological temporality and contemporary neuroscience. The proposed model provides a minimal mathematical grammar for describing the non-classical, overlapping temporality that constitutes the lived structure of human action.

Universe, complexity and human history.

Enric Vicedo-Rius — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract: The aim of this work is to analyze whether human societies are governed by laws analogous to those governing the evolution of the universe. Specifically, we examine the development of complexity, the law of increasing entropy, and the predominance of non-equilibrium and non-stable systems in the universe. Our findings indicate that throughout human history, there has been a prevalence of rigid, stable systems in equilibrium, characterized by lower complexity in human activities and social relations. These systems have primarily benefited a minority rather than the broader population, resulting in reduced entropy generation. Conversely, we have observed that transitioning partially or entirely toward non-stable, non-equilibrium systems—where the living conditions and rights of the population are protected and expanded—fosters a greater complexity of societies. This transition is associated with increased activity, complexity, wealth, and entropy creation, aligning with the laws governing the evolution of the universe.

Technological Signatures of Super Civilizations

Olev Vinn — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The evolution trajectory of technological civilizations envisioned by Kardashev suggests ever increasing amounts of energy being harvested by the civilizations resulting in creation of megatructures of an astronomical scale. However, the idea may itself reflect a relatively crude phase of our technological development, rather than a universal principle. An alternative vision is that of technological minimalism: achieving maximal outcomes with minimal energy expenditure. Instead of scaling energy consumption upwards without limit, an advanced civilization may optimize and miniaturize its processes. It might master engineering at the quantum scale, developing technologies that use only the smallest amounts of energy necessary to accomplish a given task. Advanced technological civilization may deliberately isolate its technological infrastructure from the natural world. From an interstellar distance, their planet could appear untouched to earthly observer, with a naturally thriving biosphere, devoid of industry or artificial interference.

The Ontological Reconstruction of the Problem of the Virtue-Happiness Concord: On the Tripartite Identity of Dé-Fú-Jié

Feng Lin — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract: This paper aims to provide a novel ontological solution to the ancient problem of the virtue-happiness concord. Traditional solutions have reached an impasse because they have consistently sought answers within an ethical or theological framework. This paper argues that the root of the problem is not ethical, but ontological. To this end, it proposes and defends the theory of the tripartite identity of Dé-Fú-Jié. This theory reveals that our gifted potentiality (Dé), phenomenal fulfillment and happiness (Fú), and the possibility of annihilation as the immanent limit of being (Jié) are not three conflicting, independent elements, but are identical at the ontological root. The core thesis of this paper is that it is precisely this deep ontological unity that necessarily causes the disunity of virtue and happiness that we experience in the phenomenal world. This conclusion not only reinterprets the problem of evil and suffering but also lays the foundation for a new ethics based on an "asymmetrical responsibility" to "Life" itself.

Henry Miller and the mechanism of modernity

Andrew Milne — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Like many twentieth century writers, Henry Miller diagnosed a "spiritual famine" besetting modern civilisation. This condition was, Miller believed, characteristic of a mechanistic mode of thought that viewed everything from the outside, and whose only values were strictly instrumental. This essay focuses on Miller's works from the 1930s, and seeks to present his diagnosis in its broader intellectual context.

Did God Create the Universe?

Seungbae Park — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Just because God is omnipotent, it does not follow that he could create the universe out of nothing. It is possible for infinitely many events to have occurred, so the universe need not have had a beginning. To say that the universe does not have a beginning does not mean that an infinite amount of time has passed. If God is a necessary being, the universe is also a necessary being. It is problematic to claim that God caused the Big Bang. If God is a timeless being, he cannot create the universe. Finally, the atheist position that the universe does not have a beginning is preferable to the theist position that God created the universe.

Strange Loops, Vicarious Causation, and More-Than-Human Consciousness

Richard Bower — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This essay conjectures a novel intersection of Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) and Douglas Hofstadter’s inquiries into human cognition. Prompted by Harman’s use of metaphor and Hofstadter’s exploration of analogy, the essay explores the origins and implications of these linguistic devices as distinct depictions of ontology and consciousness: metaphor as necessitated by the ontological withdrawal of objects, and loops of analogous perception as the intrinsic foundation of cognition. This intersection affords a subsequent contestation of Hofstadter’s depiction of human consciousness and identity against Harman’s unresolved depictions of speculative polypsychism as a necessity of post-anthropocentric ontologies. Drawing on Quentin Meillassoux’s break from correlationism, Jane Bennett’s thing-power, and Ian Bogost’s alien phenomenology, we argue that Gödelian incompleteness exemplifies the irreducible withdrawal of objects. Ultimately, the implication of analogy and metaphor in both Hofstadter’s and Harman’s work is conjectured as an irresolvable limitation of anthropocentric representation, leading to the novel translation of Gödel’s ‘Incompleteness Theorem’ (via Hofstadter) as a possible realisation of the withdrawn unknowability of objects advocated in Harman’s OOO.

A Genealogy of the Good Anthropocene

Patrick Michelson, Lisa Sideris — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

To understand the emergence of the "good Anthropocene"—a positive spin on the concept—this work begins by exploring historical precedents and forces immediately surrounding the French Revolution. It was then that an array of Christian ideas and narratives about providence, anthropology, and the purpose of human existence were partly secularized by Romantic and Idealist thinkers in accordance with contemporary scholarship. We argue that much of what is said by advocates of the good Anthropocene and much of what is censured by their critics has intellectual origins in that historical moment. We then show how those reconfigurations became part of nineteenth-century Russian Orthodox thought and its intelligentsia counterpart, where it was then furthered by Russian figures including Vernadsky, Fedorov, Tsiolokovsky, and Dobzhansky. Finally, we examine the consequences of this second, refracted reconfiguration, which, as a genealogy of anticipation, gave rise to the good Anthropocene concept and is regularly used to defend the good Anthropocene’s assumptions about a coming age of human integrity and cosmic healing. As we will see, the problem of the good Anthropocene is not its tendency to draw upon the science of Vernadsky, Fedorov, Tsiolokovsky, or Dobzhansky to explain the Anthropocene. Rather, the problem is that advocates of the good Anthropocene are using a set of grand narratives about history, nature, and consciousness that border on the fantastic and that function as religion. They construct myths about evolutionary biology, whereby its highest creation—imagined here to be homo sapiens—has attained the cognitive capacity and technological know-how to solve a planetary crisis of its own making. In fact, it appears that these optimistic narratives are more meaningful to advocates of the good Anthropocene than the science around which they are organized. In other words, the problem of the good Anthropocene is not (only) one of science. It is one of story-telling.