A philosophical worldview or belief system grounded on the 20th century discovery that Information, rather than Matter, is the fundamental substance of everything in the universe. It is intended to be the 21st century successor to the ancient worldviews of Materialism and Idealism. An Update from Bronze Age to Information Age. It's also a Theory – of – Everything that covers, not just matter & energy, but also Life & Mind & Love.
Post 156.May 16, 2026
NATURA NATURANS
God : Essence of Nature
Baruch Spinoza, a 17th century philosopher, caught between quarreling religious sects, rejected the traditional Hebrew, Jewish, Christian & Muslim concept of God, as the transcendent magical creator of the natural world. Instead, he concluded that God is the immanent eternal essence & cause of the real space-time world. Not super-natural, but Nature-as-a- verb. Literally, Nature naturing¹, doing what nature does : existing, making weather, sustaining Life, etc. This was not a new idea, but a return to the ancient worldview of Pantheism⁴, without the arbitrary artificial divisions of human politics. It may also reflect Aristotle’s notion of an impersonal First Cause² to explain the existence of a temporal world.
On the other hand, the notion of an idealized world ruler [supreme sovereign, global hegemon, planetary despot, and cosmocrat] dwelling in an isolated ideal realm apart from the mundane world, was a reflection of how ancient middle-eastern empires, such as Egypt or Babylon³, were organized. The Pharaoh or Emperor lived in a magnificent palace, typically on a hill above the countryside, and ruled ruthlessly and autocrat-ically over the common people below. However, before centralized civilizations emerged in the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia, their gods were more down-to-earth, mostly imagined as romanticized models of tribal leaders, and repre-sented the awesome forces of Nature, such as lightening.
In 6th century BC China, Lao Tse, a philosopher/poet saw the source of conflict between warring tribes and cities in their pantheon of gods, modeled on power-hungry human tyrants. So, he imagined a natural world above and beyond human egos : The TAO {See box below} The name refers to a continual flow of energy like a river, which follows the terrain, instead of a raging flood that forces an arbitrary path through the world.
A modern worldview that is somewhat similar to Taoism is PanEnTheism, which imagines that God is the Whole of which the big-bang-born natural world is a part, or that God is the metaphysical lawmaker who established the laws of physical Nature. A god of natural regularities, not political laws. The term was coined by A.N. Whitehead’s associate, Charles Hartshorne, to explain how the Process philosophy envisioned the First Cause of natural Evolution.
2. First Cause : Natura naturans ("naturing nature") is a philosophical concept denoting the active, creative, and generative forces of the universe. It establishes a precedent for viewing nature not as a static, passive object (natura naturata or "natured nature"), but as an ongoing, infinite process of becoming. . . . The phrase was coined by medieval Schoolmen to describe the active, causative power of God as the architect of reality. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=precedent+for+natura+naturans 3. Hammurabi (1792–1750 BCE): The founder of the First Babylonian Empire. He famously unified Meso-potamia and established the Code of Hammurabi on a stone tablet. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=babylon+emperor
4. Pantheism : Rooted in the Upanishads dating back to the first millennium BCE, early Hindu philosophy established foundational pantheistic concepts. It posits that Brahman—the ultimate, unchanging, and infinite reality—is the single unifying essence of the universe. In this view, everything is a manifestation of Brahman, collapsing the boundary between the creator and creation. Early Ionian thinkers like Thales and Heraclitus laid the groundwork for metaphysical monism. However, the most prominent pantheistic school in antiquity was Stoicism, founded by Zeno of Cittium in the 3rd century BCE. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=ancient+pantheism
Ancient pantheism is the belief that the universe and nature are divine, asserting that "all is God". It emerged independently across several civilizations. Instead of worshiping anthropomorphic, localized deities, ancient pantheists viewed the cosmos itself as a sacred, unified, and living reality. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=ancient+pantheism
Nature doing what is natural
Tower of Babylon
SPINOZA’s PANTHEISM Baruch Spinoza’s God is Nature, whose Substance is not Matter, but a single, infinite, indivisible, and self existent essence, which is the cause of everything that exists. Not just the material world, but the cosmos of Matter, Life and Mind.
In Taoism, the Tao is frequently equated with nature or the fundamental Laws of Nature. However, it is more precisely understood as the underlying, unborn potentiality and flow from which all of the natural universe originates, rather than just the physical environment itself. The Source of All Things: The Tao is seen as the invisible current, a non-dualistic principle, or the pattern behind the natural world that maintains the universe's balance. It is the origin of qi (energy) and gives birth to everything without dominating it. Philosophical Distinction: While nature refers to the empirical, tangible world we see and measure, the Tao is often described as the unnamable mystery and the "Way" the universe operates. As discussed on Reddit, many practitioners view it as the principle of order rather than a synonym for trees and animals.
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