🌌 The Cosmology of Similarity Theory

A Unified Overview

A Foundational Page of Similarity Theory
By Simon Raphael

Similarity Theory is not a single claim, model, or equation. It is a cosmological framework — a way of understanding how reality is structured, how experience unfolds, and how meaning emerges across scales. This page provides a unified overview of the theory as a whole, showing how its core pillars and foundational ideas operate together to form a coherent cosmos.

This is not an introduction, and it is not an encyclopaedic treatment. Instead, it is a synthesis — a high-level map that reveals how the elements of Similarity Theory interlock, without repeating the detailed explanations found elsewhere.

🧭 Purpose and Scope

Similarity Theory was developed to address a recurring limitation in both scientific and philosophical frameworks: fragmentation. Existing theories often explain parts of reality well — matter, mind, time, ethics, or cosmology — but struggle to integrate them into a single, consistent structure.

Similarity Theory proposes that reality is not random, nor fully reducible to any one domain. Instead, it is structured by resemblance, continuity, and layered progression. Patterns repeat across scales, but never identically. Each repetition carries memory, constraint, and evolution.

The aim of the theory is not to replace science, religion, or philosophy, but to provide a unifying architecture within which they can coexist without contradiction.

🧠 The Three Pillars

At its core, Similarity Theory rests on three inseparable pillars:

🔹 Consciousness

Consciousness is the primary organising principle of reality. It is not an emergent by-product of matter, nor merely a property that appears once systems become sufficiently complex. Rather, consciousness is fundamental and ubiquitous — present throughout the universe at all scales.

However, Similarity Theory does not claim that all consciousness is identical, interchangeable, or uniformly experienced. Consciousness exists everywhere, but it does not always exist as an individual, self-referential perspective.

A useful analogy is language. Language exists everywhere as potential: it can be spoken into the air, written on paper, or carried silently in thought. Words can travel, meanings can spread, and the language itself is not confined to any one place. Yet, when language takes form — as a written sentence or a spoken phrase — it becomes localised to that expression. The language is universal; the expression is specific.

Consciousness operates in the same way. It is omnipresent as potential, but when it takes form — as an atom, a plant, an animal, or a human — it becomes localised to that mode of being. The form does not contain consciousness; it focuses it. Individual experience arises not because consciousness is created, but because it is expressed through constraints.

This is where Similarity Theory diverges from classical panpsychism. While panpsychism often treats consciousness as a uniform property distributed across matter, Similarity Theory treats consciousness as a continuous field capable of distinct, layered expressions. Individuality, memory, agency, and responsibility emerge only when consciousness is sufficiently structured and localised in time.

In this way, consciousness is both universal and individual: free in its essence, yet specific in its expression.

🔹 Time

Time is not a single linear river, nor an illusion. It is a structured field composed of frames. All moments exist, but conscious beings move through similar streams of frames, creating the lived experience of continuity, causality, and choice.

No experienced moment is destroyed; each remains as a stable frame within the structure of time.

🔹 Dimensions

Dimensions define the modes of being under which consciousness and time operate. More precisely, dimensions are the rule-sets of consciousness and time, shaped and established by the degree of conscious complexity that has been reached.

Different dimensions therefore express different limits, freedoms, and internal dynamics. Within each dimension, there are layers — degrees of expression and complexity, rather than separate realities.

None of these pillars can exist meaningfully without the others. Consciousness requires time to experience, time requires dimensional rules to remain coherent, and dimensions require consciousness to be known.

🔁 Dynamics: How the Pillars Arise and Interact

Similarity Theory is concerned less with static definitions and more with becoming.

At the foundation of all dynamics is consciousness. Consciousness is the originator of reality. Before time, before dimensions, there is awareness. When consciousness recognises itself — when even the slightest internal change occurs — time is born. Time is therefore not an external container, but the record of change within consciousness.

As consciousness continues to exist, it moves through time by sustaining difference between what was and what is. Each moment is not erased, but retained as a frame, allowing continuity, memory, and experience to emerge.

Dimensions arise later, not at the beginning. As consciousness accumulates complexity, it eventually reaches points where it can no longer express itself within the same constraints. When consciousness becomes sufficiently complex to transform the nature of its own expression, new dimensional rule-sets appear. Each dimension represents a new mode of being — a new way consciousness and time can operate together.

Within these dimensions, consciousness expresses itself through entities, behaviours, and limitations appropriate to that mode of existence. Change does not occur through randomness, but through progressive refinement, as consciousness moves into states that are similar, but never identical, to what came before.

The universe, in this view, is not a fixed structure, but an ongoing process: consciousness unfolding itself through time and dimensions as complexity increases.

🏗️ From Foundations to Cosmos

The broader foundations of Similarity Theory explain how a stable cosmos can arise without collapsing into chaos or stagnation.

◼️ Emptiness

The theory begins with emptiness — not as nothingness, but as unexpressed potential. Emptiness becomes cosmologically significant only when it becomes aware of itself.

◼️ Frames of Time

Once awareness exists, continuity is required. Frames of time provide this continuity, allowing experience to persist without erasing alternative possibilities.

◼️ Dimensional Layering

Dimensional structure prevents total freedom (which would destroy coherence) while allowing sufficient flexibility for evolution. Higher layers carry more complexity, but also more responsibility.

◼️ Ethics

Ethics is not imposed externally. It emerges naturally from relational awareness. As consciousness recognises itself in others, actions acquire consequence, and responsibility becomes unavoidable.

Together, these foundations form a cosmos that is stable yet open, ordered yet capable of transformation.

🌍 The Shape of Reality in Similarity Theory

Reality, in this framework, is neither a closed loop nor a straight line. It is spiral-like:

Patterns repeat
Knowledge accumulates
Progress is possible without exact duplication

Each conscious choice contributes to the expansion of the overall structure. The universe grows not merely in size, but in resolution.

In Similarity Theory, individuality is not a temporary illusion that dissolves with change or death. Each conscious perspective remains distinct as consciousness progresses through time, layers, and dimensions. While forms and modes of expression may end, the individual trajectory is preserved within the structure of reality. Progression does not erase identity; it carries it forward.

🧩 What This Page Is — and Is Not

This page is:

A conceptual synthesis
A structural map
A guide to how the theory fits together

This page is not:

A replacement for the foundational pages
A technical proof
A complete exposition of every concept

Each idea introduced here is explored in depth elsewhere. This overview exists to ensure the reader never loses sight of the whole while exploring the parts.

🗺️ Where to Go Next

Similarity Theory can be approached from more than one direction. Some readers prefer a structured path; others prefer exploration. Both are valid.

◼️ Core Pillars (Recommended)

To understand the full internal logic of Similarity Theory, the following foundational pages form the core pillars of the framework:

These pages define the fundamental architecture of the theory. Reading them — in any order, and at your own pace — will provide the clearest picture of how Similarity Theory holds together.

That said, they are not prerequisites in the strict sense. If they feel dense at first, you may return to them later. Understanding often deepens with revisiting.

◼️ Exploratory Hubs (Interest-Driven)

All pages in Similarity Theory are designed to stand on their own. You are free to explore according to interest:

Foundations — deeper treatments of the theory’s building blocks
Philosophy — meaning, identity, ethics, and purpose
Science — interfaces with physics, cosmology, and systems thinking
Reflections — experiential, interpretive, and narrative insights

Many readers find that encountering individual pages first allows patterns to assemble naturally over time. The full picture does not need to arrive all at once.

Similarity Theory is not meant to be mastered in a single sitting. It is meant to be entered, left, returned to, and gradually integrated — much like the reality it describes.

Similarity Theory is an evolving framework. Like the universe it describes, it is structured — but never closed.