Summary

This little series of blog postings tries to discuss the topic of

• A Common Layering of the Universe, or, in other words,
• An Order of Creation.

The following blog postings are currently available within this series:

• We are all Brothers and Sisters, an “Order of Creation” is bullshit
  see (THIS POSTING) https://areasharpa.blog/2024/04/01/layers-planes-tiers-wtf/.
• A more scientific discussion about why we COULD or why we COULD NOT split the universe into layers
  see https://areasharpa.blog/2024/04/06/protocols-and-interfaces-wtf/.
• An idea, why the discovery (invention?) of abstraction layers in the Information Sciences of the 20th century could have incented the discussion about the Layers of the Universe, freshly
  Introduction: see https://areasharpa.blog/2024/04/07/layer-mania-wtf/,
  Protocols and Interfaces: see https://areasharpa.blog/2024/04/14/software-protocols-and-interfaces/.
• A philosophic summary: see https://areasharpa.blog/2024/04/17/layer-mania-ii/.

Introduction

Please don’t be shocked. This posting will be about some philosophy.

This is not a blog posting about science of nature, nor about science of technology, it could even be interpreted as a religious posting.

Hence, this posting is a temporary contradiction (let’s say an exception according to Heisenberg) to my principle about keeping this blog an agnostic blog.

If you cannot accept this, then please ignore this posting 🙂 .

Dear Reader!

Perhaps this blog is not the right place for a discussion about the layers of the Universe, but I think, it is never too early and never too late, in order to stand still a little bit and think about WHAT we are doing here, on this planet, in this Universe, NOW AND HERE, and WHY we do it.

You might remember, we had such discussion already, almost two years ago, on this blog:

• https://areasharpa.wordpress.com/2022/08/26/the-eight-four-layers-of-the-universe/
• https://areasharpa.wordpress.com/2022/09/03/why-objects-and-interactions/

Now, a few days ago, I had a discussion with John C., maybe it was more a kind of “twofold brainstorming”, as it is always with John 🙂

We chatted about interfaces, protocols, data formats, behavior, declarative and imperative programming and all those clumsy terms that are used by nerds and other programmers all the day.

So I decided, to start from scratch and try to understand all this. Probably I am not yet mature enough to actually understand all this – to be enlightened – so there we go.

Please understand this blog post as an attempt to understand a part of the Universe, done by a kind of “weekend philosopher” (as I would describe myself).

Why did I try to classify the “Layers of the Universe”

Well, those days I stated:

I have to say that I’m a programmer and therefore I am keen to layer any system – from top to bottom – it’s an occupational disease of us programmers.

Nowadays, I would be more cautious.

Isn’t it a general pattern, which we find in the Universe, when we study it?

We can state:

• The entities of the Universe provide SERVICES to each other
• Always one entity is the PROVIDER of the service
• The other entity is the USER of the service
• Another wording:
  • One entity OFFERS the service
  • The other entity CONSUMES the service

So, in a nutshell, we may say:

• The usage/consumption of the services happens by rules that the providers/offerers have established
• Programmers call such set of rules the INTERFACE of a service / of an entity

However, one major drawback comes with all this LAYERING OF THE UNIVERSE.

When we always draw the user above the provider, or left of the provider, then we are seduced to do a judgement about the VALUE of the layers.

We presume the upper layers, the users/consumers, being “the first”, having higher VALUE than the providers/offerers.

So we come to the conclusion the user/consumer must PAY a compensation to the provider/offerer.

All this leads to the bad story of money and wealth that we elaborated at mankind.

We are all brothers and sisters

Here – and I have to say that as a Christian – we must stumble upon the book of revelation, chapter 22, were we can read about Christ:

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.

In other words: Christ is the lowest layer of the Universe and at the same time he is the highest.

This MUST make us think that all this LAYERING OF THE UNIVERSE is bullshit eventually.

It depends on the use case – on the actually provided service – if an entity is a provider or a user. The roles of provider and user may change with time.

While man is a user of the Earth’s services most time, the roles will flip after death, when the body provides services to the worms and bacteria that will eat him.

So, the layering is something dynamically, up and down, left and right may change with time, all life is a chaotic back and forth and cannot be classified by something stupid like fixed layers of the Universe or a “food chain” or some similar scalar ordering.

May I suggest to think about the “Canticle of the Sun”, by Saint Francis of Assisi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canticle_of_the_Sun)?

Saint Francis dared to call all creature as sisters and brothers. This should make us thinking a little bit.

Have a nice week

Yours Christoph