Homo Sapiens as a Problem

Cosmogony of Reason

The only thing that gives the human race hope to overcome the hostility of the universe

1. Obvious and Unfathomable

Sometimes, people have to deal with vital phenomena to the same extent as inexplicable as evident. It is not only a mystery but also a challenge for the human mind to understand how exactly this or that fact, seemingly unknowable, affects human lives and the fate of society. Fortunately, if one is capable of recognizing a logical structure in it, the task becomes feasible: not knowing for sure what causes this or that event, but by systematizing its manifestations, the human mind can comprehend it and use the power of the natural laws for its own sake.

The changing of seasons is a trivial example of one such phenomenon. For many centuries, people had no clue about what the Solar system was like; they did not know that Earth has a spherical shape, that it revolves around a giant ball, and that trillions and trillions of tons (accurate mass, simply put, is unthinkable) of its substance is in a state of permanent thermonuclear reaction. They did not know that the planet's axis tilt is the very crucial factor that causes the alternation of summer, autumn, winter, and spring. But no matter how mysterious this process was, it remained unchanged, making it possible to predict its course; peasants knew how to calculate the time for sowing and harvesting, and priests — on which calendar day to glorify the gods for the gift of this constancy.

Centuries had passed, and modern science emerged. Astronomy, geodesy, and meteorology replaced astrology and cults for the glory of deities. Many beliefs of bygone generations now look naive in the quantum physics and biotechnology age. But the significance of the empirical research method has retained its importance, and it is unlikely that a true scientist will question its value. Now, we know what natural processes stand behind the changing of seasons, but this knowledge has not affected this order itself. It remains unchanged from the very beginning of observations upon it.

The list of natural phenomena, being explained by science, continues to grow. Among them, there are ones whose existence is accepted by the scientific community even though their nature is still unknown. Perhaps the most wide-scale example is the discovery of dark matter (in the last quarter of the 20th century) and dark energy (at the very end of that century). These two precedents provided the missing links in the overall picture of the Universe; it is currently believed that they comprise more than 95% of its mass. It is the very part we knew nothing about 50 years ago. And, in fact, nowadays, we also know very little for sure about this enormous fraction. But then, why do we believe in their existence? Because we can measure their effect on the visible part of the Universe as a constant of the immutable pattern.

2. The Unified Method

Like many others, these incredible discoveries became possible due to two powerful and interrelated abilities of human intelligence: pattern recognition and generalization. And it is precisely what philosophy, a jealous but beloved older sister of science, is based on. And one of the explanations for its immense influence on human minds is precisely in its ability to see the essence of phenomena where no other research discipline has access — to the world where the experimental approach is not applicable but where the theoretical analysis can prove all its power, as being a universal method of cognition that both philosophy and science have in common.

This deep kinship connection between philosophical generalization and scientific research is amazing. It may look implicit, elusive, and even incomprehensible, but it is real, although centuries may elapse between the appearance of the philosophical hypothesis and its scientific confirmation. So it was, for example, with the atomic model of matter, the idea of which arose in ancient Greece in the form of the concept of Atomism. This insight came to the minds of the ancient philosophers centuries before modern science came with all its theoretical and instrumental power. And when that happened, the philosophical hypothesis, considering the fundamental physical structure of the world, got its scientific confirmation.

And there is hardly anything surprising in that quite often, an empirical postulate, being spawned by a great mind, afterward gets accepted in domains where no ambiguities are permissible by definition. The famous Plato’s Theory of Ideas, which had a tremendous impact on European philosophy and the very European way of thinking, was implemented, among others, in the world of information technology. One of its fundamental paradigms — Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) — is based on the same principle that describes relationships between objects of reality, elaborated more than two thousand years ago by a brilliant philosophizing mind. The creators of the OOP needed to solve a problem in the field that did not exist in Plato’s times at all; however, their approach turned out to be essentially very alike, which once again testifies to the universal nature of logic used for solving problems in various fields of human activity.

One more evidence of the fundamental unity between philosophical and scientific cognition is one of the so-called Cosmogonic hypotheses proposed by the I. Kant (it has been set out in his Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels, published in 1755)[1] concerning the formation of the Solar system. Following Kant, stars are formed from the rarefied matter of nebulae, in which tiny particles are scattered in a void. Over time, they gravitate to each other and acquire a rotational motion, turning into clumps of matter. Eventually, large celestial bodies are formed from these clots, such as stars and planets. Despite the speculative origin of this idea, it became relevant to the modern view of the formation of planetary systems.

Finally, a vivid example of the fundamental relationship between philosophical and scientific methods is the origin of the Theory of Relativity. As A. Einstein used to confess, it was a philosophy that greatly influenced his revolutionary discovery. On December 14, 1915, he wrote a letter to Moritz Schlick (1882–1936), a professor of philosophy at the University of Rostock. In that remarkable message, the greatest physicist admitted that his Special Theory of Relativity was influenced by Ernst Mach’s and David Hume’s philosophies:

… Mach, and, even more, Hume, whose Treatise of Human Nature I studied with passion and admiration shortly before discovering the [special] theory of relativity. Very possibly, I wouldn’t have come to the solution without those philosophical studies[2].

Einstein, of course, was not the only famous scientist who embraced philosophy. A great mind is great precisely because it can discern true might and beauty in any significant creative idea, regardless of what kind of world it has been spawned by. And this universality of perception is the essence and reflection of reason as the supreme virtue of Man.

3. The Fulcrum

It is hardly possible to find a more improbable phenomenon among the obvious ones than the existence of a self-reflecting human mind. The paradox of being is incomprehensible and, at the same time, indisputable. And therefore, the Cartesian[3] cogito, ergo sum, is perhaps the greatest saying in the history of philosophy. This argument is ideal as the shape of a circle; it can not be refuted since the ability to be aware of self proves the existence of a subject of sensory experience, and even if the world is a hallucination or a dream, this does not disprove[4] the truth of the statement, but, on the contrary, confirms it. Thus, the mind obtains the Archimedean fulcrum in understanding reality; here, nothing turns into something. Here Cosmos emerges. And since it appears to be discrete, it is knowable.

And indeed, the human mind is capable of cognition. Its results are not always reliable, yet it brings us closer to the truth; one by one, the mind adds the bricks of the acquired knowledge to the building of its idea of the surrounding world. Completing and supplementing it with new architectural details, it expands its space protected from the chaos of uncertainty raging outside.

This cognitive ability was traditionally distinguished by philosophers in the human mind and, to one degree or another, has been oppositional to its properties, which give rise to fickle feelings and deceptive sensations. This quality is known by several names, the most commonly used of which, in the European philosophical tradition, is “Reason” (henceforth, we will capitalize the word that designates this term).

Although it appeals to the specific human capacity (to make rationally reasoned judgments), as a philosophical concept, it is abstract. Reason can not be measured directly; we can only judge the degree of reasonableness inherent in a particular intention by the effects it produces. If we return to the cosmological analogy, we can draw a parallel here with dark matter and dark energy, which intrinsic content we know nothing about, and yet we can consider their properties because we measure the effect of these entities on other objects in the Universe.

The history of Reason, as a concept, has ancient roots. The Age of Enlightenment approved it as the major point of the European worldview. But it had occupied one of the central places in the philosophical discourse of the Old Continent long before the thinkers of that time attempted to replace the dogmas of Judeo‑Christianity with the belief in Ratio. And such a vital role of Reason is not surprising since nothing else than it determines the purpose and primary function of philosophy — the achievement of truth through understanding the regularities of the surrounding world.

Many researchers believe that Plato played the most significant role in making the concept of Reason the cornerstone of European philosophy. He metaphorically presented it as one of the three components of the human soul (psyche)[5]: its logical element (λογισμός), which has a divine and immortal nature; unlike other parts, appetitive (epithumia) and spirited (thumos), it can be abstracted from the body that is thought to be just its temporary refuge. According to Plato, Reason is the sacred golden cord[6] connecting Man to Truth, and this knowledge of the true nature of things allows Reason to preserve the integrity of the soul since having comprehended the essence of each of its parts, their harmonious interaction can be achieved.

The provision about the existence of some true essence of things is not only the basis of Plato’s philosophy (in particular, the theory mentioned above of Ideas) but also an essential part of the view of the European civilization: we must not let go of the sacred golden cord since we believe that there is no alternative to truth. When people let go of it, chaos comes.

Aristotle, one of the greatest philosophers of all time, a disciple and at the same time an implacable opponent of Plato, made a decisive contribution to the transformation of the philosophical concept of Reason into an instrument of practical application: he invented formal logic. It enabled the human mind to determine the truth of judgments based on a system of formal proofs. The process of apprehension of truth could thus be systematized; the connection between the capacity for the logical conclusion and the attainment of Good became not only empirically recognizable but also gave Reason a perspective of limitless power: for if we can methodologically investigate the laws governing the Universe, it becomes possible to obtain objective proof of the truth of the made assumptions. Ultimately, this opens the way to the mastery of all the infinite energy of Space!

However, formal logic, remaining the primary means of obtaining judgments from Antiquity, does not guarantee their truthfulness without clear prerequisites for solving the problem. That is especially important in cases where the actual effect may be delayed in time. Intuition, used as an auxiliary tool of cognition, can not supplement logic to the necessary degree: being in many cases capable of giving an impulse to thought in a fruitful direction, it is not suitable for confirming the validity of ultimate judgments.

At the end of the XVIII century, the problem of cognition became the focus of German idealism, which resulted in an original synthesis of epistemology and metaphysics, thanks to the efforts of Kant, J. G. Fichte (1762–1814), F. W. J. Schelling (1775–1854) and, finally, G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831).

Kant was the first to divide Reason into practical (Verstand) and absolute (Vernunft). He had proposed this idea in his famous treatise The Critique of Pure Reason (1781, 1787). There, among other things, he introduced the so-called Transcendental Logic as an instrument of knowledge, capable, in his opinion, of overcoming the limitations of Aristotelian logic. The idea was that Absolute Reason (Vernunft) can acquire knowledge outside the individual experience of a thinking subject, which is always constrained to one degree or another, but a priori.

Kant’s ideas turned out to be quite demanded for that time and had gained further development that led to another original concept by Hegel, the most significant German classical philosopher. His doctrine considered both the method and the subject of knowledge. According to it, Reason, as the quintessence of cognition, ultimately appears as the creative force that guides the course of history, embodied in the so-called Absolute Idea (“Die Absolute Idee”). This substance, being initially impersonal, turns into a subject of the external world, where it becomes part of nature, including Man, and is reflected in his intellectual and spiritual activities, such as art, religion, science, and philosophy. In this way, it implements the potential of eternal development through the complexification of matter, organic life, and Man’s creative activities, cognizing and changing the world. The final stage of this process is the transformation of the Absolute Idea into the Absolute Self-conscious Spirit (“Geist”).

Hegel was perhaps the brightest philosopher of the Modern era, who articulated the idea of some objective laws that predetermine the development of world history (and, accordingly, human society). Although his teachings never lacked criticism (which both its content and representation were subjected to), it significantly impacted the development of European thought. That was hardly accidental since Hegel had proposed the concept by providing a philosophically consistent explanation regarding the phenomenon of permanent complexification of entities of the surrounding world (and essentially the objectivity of progress). Although many other thinkers recognized this pattern before Hegel, the latter contributed uniquely to its understanding. He formulated its philosophical definition and proposed a dialectical method of its justification. According to his approach, it is the internal contradictions, intrinsic to the essences of the surrounding world, that is the driving force of its development (this was one of the key differences of his philosophy from his predecessor Kant, with whom Hegel agreed with a lot, but at the same time criticized his approach as incomplete). That is precisely the regularity that can be found now everywhere, including such phenomena as biological and social evolution, or scientific and technological progress: their subjects are constantly facing the need to respond to particular challenges that are the result of contradictions that arise/accumulate internally; overcoming them causes the very transformations that lead to complexifications.

However, being entirely original, Hegel’s ideas did not come from anywhere. The assumption of a phenomenon that predetermines the evolution of the Universe and is reflected in the cognitive and creative human mind arose more than two millennia before Hegelianism. And without this idea, the modern Western world would not emerge.

4. The Word of Everything

From the very beginning of human history, many thinkers believed that the phenomenon of Creation is a natural part of the Universe (today, using more mundane terminology, we would call it a force leading to the systematic complexification of matter). This appearance can be discerned in nature and, ultimately, in the human mind since ancient philosophers saw humans as an integral part of the Cosmos. One of the first concepts devoted to this phenomenon was the ancient Greek doctrine of Logos (λόγος), the author of which is believed to be Heraclitus[7].

The concept of Logos is quite complex and can be understood in several ways. In the teachings of Heraclitus, it appears as a certain universal regularity of the unfolding of the forms of being, which determines the unity of the entire diversity of phenomena of the Cosmos. Although in a somewhat different context, Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics, the Neoplatonists, and many others referred to the logos in their works. Later, Christian scholars borrowed this concept and widely used it in theology. Particularly, it is noted in the Gospel of John, where “logos” is utilized in the meaning of “word” (Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος)[8]. However, word, in this case, is not just an ordinary set of symbols representing one or another object of the world. It is the entity, which the world itself is originated from:

In the beginning, was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God[9].

This word further becomes a message that the Creator of the Universe sends to humans, and at the same time, it becomes Its personified messenger, who appears in Christianity in the character of Jesus. Being one of the implementations of the Absolute and, at the same time, the son of Man, he descends into a world full of passions and imperfections to bring the light of truth into it (in this, it is easy to trace the analogy with the Hegelian Absolute Idea entering the world).

Thus, Logos (God the Son appears as one of its implementations) in Christianity is the epitome of Reason and the quintessence of infinite virtue.

It is evident that in Judeo-Christianity (and religion in general), God is the source of truth and the initiator of Creation. But initially, the Logos had nothing to do with any personified being. Rather, it was a kind of abstract entity that preceded God (here, again, it is easy to see shared features with Hegel’s Absolute in its initial state). Thus, Logos is the immanent characteristic of the Universe itself as a philosophically finite, all-encompassing entity, and if it was different, Cosmos would not look like it does now.

So, we apply the allegory taken from the IT world to this ancient Greek philosophical concept. In that case, the Cosmos is a kind of device consisting of material and intellectual components. The first is all objects observable in the Universe. At the same time, the intellectual one controls them, a complex computer program, including a set of universal constants (gravity, speed of light, half-life, and so forth). In this case, Logos is a set of rules for that program algorithm to be written, just like mathematics is for actual software development. It is a meta-entity that does not interact with real objects in any way but determines the principle of program execution. And although religious doctrine implies that there must always be One-Who-created-this-Universal-mathematics, the philosophical concept of Logos does not refer to a specific Creator. The language of mathematics is simultaneously abstract, accurate, and objective. It is a language for describing the physical reality. And it is based on logic, which is self-sufficient and will exist independently as long as the Universe exists. In this sense, mathematical logic was not invented but discovered.

Then, it becomes clear why the word “logic” is originated from “logos” and reflects one of its faculties. It is its ontological basis; it is given to us as it is forever and explains the world’s causality. It is immutable, and all the laws of this world obey it. At the same time, it is a meta-language that humans understand, which allows us to describe the objective laws of the Universe and, therefore, predictably interact with the outside world. Thanks to it, we can know how to get the result of a particular chemical reaction, achieve minimal physical wear of industrial materials, or calculate the trajectory flight of a space probe to any of the planets of the Solar System.

It is essential to notice here that philosophers considered Logos as an ontological foundation of ethics[10], a universal means to distinguish Good from Evil. Thus, the ethical principles a virtuous person adheres to are absolute in their essence and do not depend on anything apart from their inner content; neither the political conjuncture nor the laws enforced by the rulers in the name of perpetuating their power can influence it. Nothing can be above them since they embody the rules of sapience.

Thus, human reason taking onset in the cosmic Logos fulfills two crucial functions that determine Man’s being: first, it allows him to comprehend the objectivity of the surrounding world; this means that Man not only gets a chance to confront the chaos but also can turn the powerful forces of the elements in his favor. And secondly, it allows him to achieve mutual understanding with other people, avoid conflicts of divergent interests, and bring into his existence the meaning of the unity of all thinking beings. Man acquires the rules of sapience, a kind of lodestar that illuminates his path to a harmonious and virtuous life, resting on the natural law, the law of noncontradiction, the law of causality as a means for the adequate understanding of reality, and the same logic as a generalized method to be applied to life. And these rules are a principle, not a dogma. They do not constrain a personal choice. On the contrary, they liberate an individual from the tyranny of uncertainty and protect from imposing anyone’s will. Reason guides Man by common sense and justifies the inconsistency between the personal and the collective good.

In essence, the concept of the institutional structure of a free society is based exactly on the rules of sapience since the idea of the expediency of decisions rests on a reasonable (and therefore logically justified) balance of natural human rights. The same principle applies to the legislative system, where the analysis of the logic of acts allows us to conclude the motives of the subjects of the process. And, of course, the same is about science and education, where logic is seen as a fundamental tool for understanding the phenomena of the world around us.

Reliance on the rules of sapience is the only approach to resolve the endless disagreements around the notorious “justice.” People’s opinions on this subject often differ so significantly that the appeal to supposedly violated justice becomes the trivial basis for launching the mass violence mechanism and its subsequent justification. And it is rules of sapience that allow solving the problem of the relativity of morality behind this gloomy pattern by proposing a universal principle known not only in moral philosophy but in almost every mature religion and known as the “golden rule” (of ethics) — do not do to others what you would not want to be done to you.

This statement designates the human being as the end value based on the logically inferred unity of human nature. Compliance with this principle is clear from the validity position, allows for avoiding collisions similar to those found in Rousseau’s Social Contract, where the value of the personality (the human soul according to Plato) turned out to be lower than the interests of “the whole body” whose collective opinion (masked the so-called “will of the people”) was appointed by the criterion for determining the good for each member of society. And this logical perversion immediately led to the logical paradox of “compelling to be free” with all the consequences arising from this sophisticated pseudo-argumentation. Then, atrocities committed during the First Republic became a common practice of the subsequent “great” social revolutions since their relativistic moral and philosophical basis made it possible to justify violence under the guise of needing “higher” values to obtain their political benefits.

5. Is Reason real?

But should what is commonly referred to as “Reason” be regarded as merely a formal philosophical convention, conceptualizing a process of making logically based judgments, or as some objectively existing phenomenon?

This question seems all the more important because reliance on Reason is a fundamental tenet of modern society. No society, in turn, can exist without ensuring the continuity of its values; if they are preserved, society has a chance to evolve in line with the ever-changing realities of the world around it. Otherwise, it becomes only an episode of humanity’s development spiral full of contradictions and collisions.

So, is it possible to objectify Reason?

Let us begin with the commonality of its ideas, which, whether it is the embodiment of Logos, the Kantian Vernunft, or Ratio, which the thinkers of the Enlightenment praised, converge in the central meaning: it is always something that allows the individual to achieve the maximum Good through understanding the true nature of things. However, it is necessary to note that all these concepts arose long before the dramatic changes that occurred with the human civilization due to the rapid development of scientific and technological progress and the upheavals of the first half of the 20th century. The fact that human reason had failed to prevent the catastrophes of two world wars gave rise to doubts about the relevance of philosophy based on the intellectual heritage of Antiquity and the Modern Epoch. The existence of Truth and Reason as a means for comprehending it has been challenged by new philosophical doctrines that chose moral and ontological relativism as their Absolute.

But is it possible, indeed, to overcome the never-ending influence of the forces of entropy on the world of people while denying the existence of the objective essence of things?

Such an assumption already comes in doubt at the level of common sense and becomes completely untenable from the scientific perspective; everything has its own ground, basis, the center of attraction, and everything has a logical justification: electrons revolve around an atomic nucleus, planets around their stars, spiral galaxies around supermassive black holes; objects fall from a height to the ground, a thing that reaches a certain speed becomes a satellite of the Earth; water flows and freezes at a specific temperature. All these are objective and explainable phenomena, no matter how complicated they seem, and even such miracles as raining glass[11] or snowing stones[12] on some planets obey the same laws as the events occurring every day in the world around us. The Universe works in a certain predictable way because it contains eternal and unchanging laws, masterly conducting an ensemble of forces furious in its power but obedient to their ruler and capable of destruction and Creation as well.

This picture unfolds from the core of the beautiful concept of Logos, and all subsequent studies of great minds have followed this paradigm because another way to understand how to resist chaos is unthinkable. And this truth is evident to everyone capable of logical thinking as long as logic exists and as long as we consider it the primary tool for achieving truth.

Thus, due to the objectivity of the universal laws, irrefutably follows the conclusion that there is a way to comprehend them. Reason acts here as an algorithm for translating the encoded content of reality, in all its infinite complexity, into a representation understandable to human perception. It achieves that by employing reflection, fixation, and decomposition of the phenomena of the surrounding world into logical components in human consciousness. Furthermore, it involves the inclusion of their meaning in the space of the individual’s life experience. By allowing the human mind to comprehend reality, Reason becomes imperative, prompting that mind to accept a particular way of relating to reality. In this sense, it can be said that Reason has a purpose. At the same time, we believe that the goals of Reason are not limited to the needs of people and are not even determined by them. The ultimate reasonableness of one or another decision is measured not by how it satisfies the interests of a particular person or group of people here and now but by how much it corresponds to the true nature of things.

Considering reality at this level, we are talking about phenomena of a metaphysical order, those we can not influence. Therefore, Reason is a faculty of the human mind and an entity beyond its boundaries. It allows us to consider its nature as dual: on the one hand, it is an instrument of cognition that individual consciousness possesses; on the other hand, it is a transcendental phenomenon similar to Kantian space and time: their inner essence is incomprehensible, but their place in the picture of Man’s reality is fundamental for understanding life. The human reason is then the projection onto this absolute, unchangeable as the laws of the Universe, abstract Reason which can be attributed to the class of Platonic ideas; the rules of sapience, therefore, are its property, embodying a universal principle: the aspiration to reduce entropy in the space accessible to humans, potentially — in the whole Universe; thus, Reason is the antipode of chaos.

The transcendental essence of Reason means that it can exist only in the presence of its projection, just as the reality exists for the subject of its perception only under the condition that this very subject exists. In other words, Reason is real as long as the subjects of thinking, i.e., people, believe in it.

And it is more real than any other incorporeal object because it gifts Man that very Platonic golden cord in the form of cognizing, which allows a human to achieve the truth and verify its authenticity. That becomes possible also concerning intricate ethical issues; since the goal of Reason is to reduce the entropy of the Universe, it assigns the highest value to that which maximizes its achievement. And this is nothing other than Man as the only creature is known today capable of making logically proven judgments. Thus, the projection of Reason onto the human mind adds one more basis for the ontological identity of humans, which excludes antagonism from their relations. That can be given a pretty objectivistic justification: this principle guarantees that thinking subjects can attain the maximum total amount of energy at their disposal by expending the same efforts. It is gained when the wasting of energy for intentionally destructive actions is excluded.

This way is the most rational for the transition from a zero-level civilization that is not protected from destruction due to natural causes to a next-level civilization that has overcome the Great Filter threshold.

So, the cognitive capacity bestowed upon humans by Reason makes the potential power of their intellect boundless; now, as our technologies have come close to creating Strong AI, this statement no longer seems a mere abstraction. Ultimately, perhaps, the most cherished dream of humankind’s greatest thinkers, which is the liberation of the human mind from the tyranny of matter (according to Plato, the body is the prison of the soul[13]), will become a reality.

That is the direction Reason leads Man. And this is the goal, the achievement of which is determined by his ability to use the projection of this Absolute in his mind, leaving him with a reason to consider himself as a rational being. Following the rules of sapience gives hope to never stop on the path of knowledge. So, since the horizons of knowledge are borderless and the effect of its implementation is cumulative, the probability of permanent progress does not seem illusory. In our opinion, the problem of it turning into a Quasi-Progressive cycle should be redefined: we need not invent the “proper” way to follow progress but an understanding of what the obstacles the course of the process natural for the Universe.

However, there is one fundamental and not obvious problem: something inside the human mind organically resists this goal from being achieved. And that beast would prefer to demolish the mind itself rather than allow Reason to become its master…

Preceding story: The Unattainable Dream of the European Enlightenment.

References

[1] The prototype of the Kant hypothesis is considered to be the development of the Swedish scientist, theologian, and philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), who expressed his views on this subject in 1734. In addition, the hypotheses of the formation of celestial bodies and planetary systems were developed by other thinkers, including Laplace (Pierre- Simon de Laplace, 1749–1827), Roche (Édouard Albert Roche, 1820–1883), Faye (Hervé-Auguste-Etienne-Albans Faye, 1814–1902).

[2] Albert Einstein, John J. Stachel, Martin J. Klein, Robert Schulmann, Ann M. Hentschel, The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, (Princeton, NJ Princeton Univ. Press, 1998), 220.

[3] Rene Descartes (1596–1616), was one of the greatest philosophers of the Modern period.

[4] However, even it is criticized.

[5] This is the so-called Tripartite Theory of Soul, which Plato coined and considered in his The Republic (Plato, The Republic).

[6] (Plato, Laws)

[7] Note that Heraclitus was one of Hegel’s favorite philosophers.

[8] Symbolism in the Gospel of John, “Chapter 1 of the Gospel of John Original Greek text and translation.”

[9] John 1, New English Translation — https://www.bible.com/bible/107/JHN.1.NET

[10] Note, that afterward, Christian theologians clearly expressed this through the image of Jesus, who sacrificed himself in the name of the salvation of the human race

[11] HD 189733b

[12] CoRoT-7b

[13] (Plato, Phaedo.)