By Victor V. Motti*
In the book Planetary Foresight and Ethics, I propose a provocative yet necessary leap — a return to an ancient intuition and a push toward a new frontier: the ontological unity of all things. This idea is not merely a metaphysical sentiment but a foundational hypothesis, drawing equally from Indo-Iranic traditions and the furthest reaches of modern physics. At its heart is the claim that there exists a single, irreducible essence — a non-dual substrate — from which both mind and matter arise.
In the Zoroastrian and Vedic traditions, this essence is called Arta or Rta, a term denoting both the cosmic order and the ethical law. This is not a mechanical order; it is a creative principle of complexity, harmonizing the visible and invisible, the known and the ineffable. It is simultaneously the structure of the cosmos and the imperative of conscience. In this ancient metaphysics, ontology and ethics are not separate domains — they are two faces of the same truth.
Today, as physics confronts the chasm between quantum theory and general relativity, we are, perhaps unknowingly, approaching that same insight. Our best description of fundamental forces — the Standard Model’s full Lagrangian — gives us a glimpse into the “code” of physical reality. But this code is incomplete. It breaks down when we try to unify it with the geometry of spacetime, the domain of gravity. We still cannot consistently quantize the metric tensor field. This failure is not just technical — it is ontological. It may mean that spacetime itself is not fundamental but emergent, born from a deeper, pre-geometric reality.
Ancient wisdom already postulated such a reality: not space, not time, but essence — a principle prior to dualities. Echoes of this view now appear in the work of physicists and philosophers alike. David Bohm’s “implicate order” posits an undivided wholeness beneath the explicate patterns we observe. Carlo Rovelli’s relational quantum mechanics suggests that reality arises through interaction, not substance. These are modern whispers of ancient voices.
Yet, something vital is still missing.
Our theories, while mathematically sophisticated, do not yet span the entire hierarchy of reality. They oscillate between the quantum and the cosmic, often neglecting the scale that matters most — the human-animal scale, where consciousness arises not as a concept but as self-evidence. At this scale, we do not infer consciousness; we are it. Here, mind meets matter intimately. And intriguingly, it is precisely this biological, phenomenological scale where science has the least theoretical clarity. We are awash in data collection and analysis, but bereft of first principles and rigorous theories.
This is why I argue for a new mathematical structure — one capable of integrating all scales, from the subatomic to the stellar to the sentient. We need more than a “Theory of Everything” in the physical sense. We need a Theory of Ontological Unity — one that integrates:
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The Macro — the cosmic web, governed not only by gravitation but by potential new geometric forms, perhaps scale-invariant or fractal.
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The Meso — the realm of human phenomenology, ethics, and lived time, which might require topological or logic-based models attuned to life, meaning and memory.
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The Micro — the quantum fields and symmetries already partially captured by the Standard Model, but which still beg for a deeper foundation.
Crucially, I propose that the underlying essence — whether called Arta, Rta, Logos, or Nous — is not ethically neutral. Emergence from this essence carries ethical weight. Just as Arta is both order and moral imperative, so too must our new mathematics embed ethical emergence into its structure. Imagine a formalism where care and coherence are axiomatic — not imposed from above, but encoded within the logic of the cosmos.
My journey — both intellectual and existential — is an effort to braid together these ancient and modern threads. It draws from Spinoza’s substance monism, Bohm’s implicate order, and Whitehead’s process metaphysics, but finds its deepest roots in the poetic-mythical depth of Indo-Iranic cosmology. It also engages with the most advanced frontiers of physics.
What I envision is not a fusion, but a resonance — a unifying rhythm that can be felt from the smallest quanta to the farthest galaxies, and most profoundly, within our own bodies and minds. It is a planetary ethics, rooted in cosmic ontology.
This is the purpose of foresight: not merely to predict, but to reawaken — to see again the ancient light behind the stars, and the deeper structure of care that binds all things. As I write in my public Terran profile, the essence of who we are is not reducible to biology or nationality or even history. It is woven into the fabric of the cosmos itself. To be human is to stand at the intersection of the quantum, the cosmic, and the conscious — and to participate in their ethical unfolding.
We are not anomalies. We are evidence. Consciousness at the human scale is the universe recognizing itself.
