About Things and Universes

Tom Tr

To my parents.
For the love, for the nurture, for the care

Chapters

Introduction

About things and universes

About axioms

Sets of axioms for abstract systems

10

Sets of axioms for physical systems

14

Belief systems

19

Social systems

21

Language

23

Introduction

To children
I have written this book for you, so that you can understand everything, or at least most of
the things there are. I dont know if you live in a house with a garden with a tree, where a
cute, little squirrel lives, jumping happily from one branch to the other If you do, it is only a
coincidence, but a very convenient one, because it can allow you to experience some of the
events in this book. Either way, I hope you enjoy reading it.

To parents
I have written this book for every little, curious thing of our kind, and mainly for those I shall
once myself produce. It is namely so that our young are always curious (unless they have
been predominantly exposed to one ideology), constantly in search of new ideas to use on
their journey throughout the universe. You, as a parent, have the responsibility that I believe to
be of a universal kind, not to blunt this beautiful bundle of inquisitive nature, but to protect it
with utmost diligence and further encourage its practice, so that it can flourish and its owner
with it. It is the book you are holding now, that can help you with this task. Just give it to your
nestling to have a go at itself, and provide assistance shall there be need for it. It is for their
own happiness, and for that of the society we are all inevitably part of, humankind.

About things and universes

There are many things out there. Some of them you can see, some of them you cant.
Some of them you can touch, some of them you cant, but you can think about any of
them. The collection of all of these things we can call universe. The universe is then all
of the things you can think about, together. The universe is everything, and it cant be
more than that. Sometimes, however, we like to think about the universe as the
collection of only those things that we can touch and see. Our parents could be a good
example of that. We can see them and touch them, we can smell mammas perfume and
feel daddys rough cheeks when we touch them, just like we can taste grandmas pie
and hear grandpas snoring. Smelling, tasting and hearing are similar to seeing and
touching, they all tell us about things. Some things they can tell us very little about. For
example something may be too far away for us to really see, or really hard to touch, like
a squirrel jumping on a tree in our garden. But if the distant thing would be closer and if
the hopping squirrel were to calm down and come to us we could touch its brown fur
and look at him from dierent angles. Some things we can find out very little about even
though they are very close and we can touch them. Air is a good example of such a
thing. It is everywhere around us and, although we can touch it, we dont really notice it.
Sometimes, however, it moves quite fast and then we can feel it and perhaps even hear
it, and we also have a special name for that - we call it wind. But do we really hear
wind? Lets go back to our snoring grandpa. When grandpa is snoring do we hear him,
or do we hear the snoring? If we have a little sister, we might want to say to her - do you
hear that snoring? That really makes sense to us. Snoring is a sound, and we like to say
we hear sounds. But to make things simpler, we will not say we hear sounds. We will
say we hear that which causes the sound. That which is its source. I can hear grandpa
now, he is snoring. Its quite annoying.

Wind can also be thought of as a sound - do you hear that wind? Sometimes we dont
think about wind as a sound, we say - do you hear that blowing sound? Either way, wind
is only movement of air. Sound, on the other hand, can be many things, but for us, most
of the time, it is movement of air and changes in its pressure. Sound is mostly
movement of air and changes in its pressure. And wind is movement of air. So sound is
actually wind - mostly -, but wind is not a sound.

Lets forget about wind for now and go back to grandpa again. He is still snoring. He is
still producing a snoring sound by moving air and changing its pressure. The sound tells
us something about grandpa - he is probably asleep -, and we can say we hear him
because he is most probably causing that snoring sound. So we can hear some things.
What about smelling? Would you say - Do you smell that pie? - or - Do you smell that
smell? - It probably depends on whether you know what is causing it, just like with
sound. Either way, what we are interested in is that which is causing the smell. The smell
also tells us something about that thing. But unlike sound, which is air moving and its

pressure changing, smell is more like a change of what air is. Air is made up of tiny
things, we can call them particles, particles of air. When their structure changes in the
right way you can smell something. So when your grandma bakes a pie, it changes the
structure of air particles and you can smell it. You can smell the pie. It smells nice.

So you can hear and smell some things. Most of the time it is because they change
something about air, and this results in you getting certain information about them. You
can also touch and taste things. You can take a piece of the pie and eat it to find out if it
tastes just as well as it smells. Touching and tasting do not have all that much to do with
air. You come near to some things in order to touch them or taste them. So it is more
direct. Seeing, on the other hand, is not so direct. You do not have to be near something
in order to see it. You can actually be quite far. So just like with hearing and smelling,
there is something between you and that thing, that allows you to hear it, smell it, or, in
this case, see it. With seeing it is not air, but light. We will talk about light soon.

So now we know that some things we can touch or see or hear or smell or taste. We will
call such things physical things. We also know that there are some things - like going
to school on Monday - that we cannot find out anything about by touching, seeing,
hearing, smelling or tasting. So these things are clearly not physical. We could call them
not physical but we will use a dierent word that will have the same meaning as not
physical. We will call them abstract. Some things are physical, some things are not. If
we think about all of them together, we are thinking about all of the things there are. We
are thinking about the universe. So the universe is a collection of physical and abstract
things. Now we will take the collection of only physical things, and call it the physical
universe. Similarly, the collection of all the abstract things we will call the abstract
universe.

Let us now talk about these two universes. First, lets talk about the things they contain.
After that, we will talk about how to explore them. I told you about sound and wind.
They had both something to do with movement of air. Is movement of air a physical
thing? How about movement in general? I mean movement of anything. Lets say
movement of your hand. Lets say you move your hand in front of you. Or you stick out
your tongue. Either way, something is moving. And it is quite easy to realise that
movement is an abstract thing. If you think otherwise, try touching it, for example. Now
you might say - but wait! When I move my hand really fast, I can hear it moving. I can
hear the movement. - No, you are hearing your hand. Its moving. You could also say
you can see the movement when you are seeing your hand moving in front of you. But
youre only seeing your hand moving - in front of you. Movement is not a physical thing.
It must be an abstract thing. It turns out that sound and wind are both abstract things.
They are both processes - something that happens -, like playing with ones little sister,
or going to school on Monday. But not all abstract things are processes. You might say
that when somebody is cute, it is not something that happens, but something that
simply is. You might say it is a state. Either way, it is an abstract thing. Cuteness is also
an abstract thing. All of these abstract things - playing with ones little sister, being cute,
cuteness - have something to do with physical things. But, in fact, there are also
abstract things that have nothing to do with physical things. Like for example numbers.
One, two, three, you know how it goes. They are abstract.

I have told you that sound and wind are abstract things. They have something to do with
movement of air. Earlier, I told you that air is actually a physical thing, although this may
seem hard to check, since air is so hard to notice. It may be hard to notice that you are
touching air, but unless you are reading this book under water, chances are that you are
touching it now. I have also told you that air is made up of tiny things, and I called them
air particles. Well, every physical thing is actually made up of tiny things. Everything
physical is made up of particles. And it should not be hard to realise that particles are
also physical things. Not only because you can touch them, but also because you know
they make up every physical thing. Particles make up everything physical. And there are
many of them. We will call them particles, just to have a name for them. It is hard to
imagine how many of them something is made up of, but it is a lot. Also, when we are
talking about a physical thing, we usually do not worry about its particles too much. I
know this makes every physical thing look very fragile, but particles can hold together
quite well. I think its time to talk about light now.

Is light an abstract thing or a physical thing? It might seem like it is a physical thing,
since you can surely see it. If you have ever been at a seaside, you have seen waves.
You would not say you touched them or could hear them, because they are not physical
things. A wave is a movement of things. It is a particular movement of things. You mean
of physical things? - you might say. Well, a wave can actually be a movement of either
things, physical or abstract. Either way, wave is a movement. If you are observing a sea
wave, you are observing movement of sea water. Now, you can think about light as a
wave. If light is a wave, and a wave is a movement of things, what are these things that
move in such a way that they cause a light wave? I will not try to explain now what they

are, but they are abstract. Yes, you cannot notice them by touching, hearing, and so on.
An interesting fact is, that these abstract things are caused by a tiny physical thing, a
particle, that is moving and at the same time changes the speed at which it is moving. It
moves faster and causes two abstract things that are often called an electric and a
magnetic field. But none of this is really important. We already know that light is a wave,
so it is abstract. But it is also true that light can behave as if it were a tiny physical thing
- a particle -, or were made up of many particles. This seems to suggest that light is also
a physical thing, since it can also seem to be made up of many physical things. Now
you will not notice it, but when light falls on your hand it is actually pushing it slightly. It
puts pressure on it. So you can think about light being a physical thing or an abstract
thing. It doesnt really matter all that much, at least not for now.

About axioms
What we now want to do is to explore each of the universes we have talked about. We
want to explore the physical universe and also the abstract universe. We have to realise
that most of the time when we will be exploring one of the universes, we will not be
exploring all of the things it contains. Most of the time we will be working only with a
certain number of these things, a certain collection of these things. We will call such a
collection a system. When we are exploring a certain part of the physical universe, we
are exploring a physical system. When we are exploring a certain part of the abstract
universe, we are exploring an abstract system.

The first thing we have to do when starting to explore any system is to choose some
axioms. What are axioms? - you might ask. Let me explain. When we want to explore
something, we first have to assume that we dont know anything about it. If you say to
me that you already know something about some system we are about to explore, I will
ask you to prove it. That means you have to show to me that what you are saying you
know is true. In order to do this you would have to use certain methods depending on
the system we would be exploring, but each time you would try to prove something to
me, you would have to use some other thing in order to do that. Then I would ask you to
prove that other thing, and so on. This may be a bit confusing, so let us talk about a
simple example.

Imagine we go for a long walk in the countryside. We walk across hills and fields, and
suddenly come across a village. It is a village, but without any people. It is as if
everybody had disappeared.

Now walking through this village, you might say to me - these villagers dont like having
gardens by their houses. You might say you know this, because no house in the village
has a garden. That would be your way of proving to me, that the villagers dont like
having gardens by their houses. I would say that makes sense, but can you also prove
there are any villagers living in this village? Now, there is nobody around, so you cannot
just point at some people and call them villagers, just like you pointed at each house
without a garden. Sure, we could maybe find out if we would wait in the village long
enough, but we dont have time for that. And we have no guarantee that any villagers
would turn up. Maybe this really is a village without any villagers. So if we want to say
we know something about the villagers, we first have to assume or declare that they
exist. This is called an axiom. It is something we say to be true and do not worry about
showing to be true. We do not worry about proving an axiom. This is an example of only
one axiom, we will soon find out that systems usually have more than only one axiom.
The system we are exploring here is a village we came across. It is a physical system.

The axiom we came up with can be written like this - There are people who live in this
village. Now when we know that the villagers exist we can make statements about them
by observing the village.

This is a very bad example. First of all, we only have one axiom, and we dont have any
real method of proving things other than just pointing at things. But I hope you now have
a better understanding of what axioms are. You should be able to tell that axioms are
abstract things. And if we have a collection of axioms, we could call it a system of
axioms, or an axiomatic system, but that could be a bit confusing so we will call a
collection of axioms a set of axioms. The first thing to do when exploring any system is
to choose a set of axioms. After we will talk about some better examples you will better
understand how to choose axioms. It is not really a big deal. After you choose the
axioms, you use them to prove things about the system you are exploring. The less
axioms you can use to prove things about a system, the better. We will talk more about
axioms in the next chapter.

Sets of axioms for abstract systems

Let us now talk about a good example of a set of axioms used to explore an abstract
system. The abstract system we will explore will be made up of abstract things you may
have already heard about at school. They are: a point, a line, a plane, a circle, and
possibly many other. We will choose the following axioms.

1. We can have a straight line from any point to any point

2. We can extend a finite straight line in a straight line, so as to have a plane

3. We can have a circle with any centre and radius

The first axiom basically says that there are points and these points can be connected
by straight lines. So there are also straight lines. The second axiom is a bit more dicult
to understand. It says that you can move a straight line perpendicularly to itself and that
gives you a plane. This is shown in the picture on the next page. The third axiom says
that you can have a circle with any centre (which is a point) and a straight line of any
distance connecting the centre of the circle to the circle itself. This straight line is called
the radius of the circle.

Now you might say that you can have an abstract thing that has three straight sides that
are all connected to each other without crossing each other. This is a proposition, and
you have to prove it. But can you use the axioms we chose in order to prove your
proposition? First you take a piece of paper and put it on your table. This is your plane.
Then you take a pencil and draw three points on the paper, such that they all lie on
dierent places. You drew the points on the paper, so they are lying in the plane.
Keeping the first axiom in mind, you will draw a straight line from each point to each
other point. You will then have three straight lines, and that will be your abstract thing
that has three sides that are all connected to each other and do not cross each other.
This is your proven proposition.

Proposition 1: We can have an abstract thing that has three straight sides that are all

connected to each other without crossing each other

This proposition may be too long, so you might want to call the abstract thing that has
three straight sides that are all connected to each other without crossing each other a
triangle.

Proposition 1: We can have a triangle

Thats more elegant. You have used the first two of the axioms to prove your
proposition. If you want to prove something else, you can use axioms and your proven
proposition in order to prove it.

Let us prove one more proposition, maybe a one bit more interesting. Let us say that
given any finite straight line, we can construct a triangle on this line, such that the three
sides of this triangle all have the same length. This means that the original finite straight
line will be one of the sides of the triangle. Now lets get to work. First we draw a straight
line by connecting two points. Let us call these points point A and point B, and the line
we can call the line AB. Now we have a finite straight line AB. Let us now draw one
circle with point A at its centre, and one circle with point B at its centre, such that their
radiuses are both equal to the line AB.

Both of these circles now have radius AB. We notice that the circles cut one another at
two points. Let the top point be called point C and draw straight lines AC and BC. We
know that point A is the centre of one of the circles and the points C and B both lie on
this circle. So lines AB and AC are both radiuses of this circle, which means they have
the same length. The same is true for the other circle and the lines AB and BC. And
because BC has the same length as AB, and AB has the same length as AC, AC must
have the same length as BC. This means the lines AB, BC, and AC all have the same
length. We also know that they give us a triangle, because we know they are all
connected to each other without crossing each other.

Proposition 2: Given any finite straight line, we can construct a triangle on this line, such

that the three sides of this triangle all have the same length

We have used each of the axioms and proposition 1 in order to prove proposition 2. We
needed to connect points by straight lines (axiom 1), we needed a plane (axiom 2), we
needed to be able to have a circle with any centre and radius (axiom 3) and we needed
a triangle (proposition 1).

By the way, a triangle whose sides all have the same length is called an equilateral
triangle.

You can probably see that the axioms we chose influence what propositions we can
prove. In other words, the set of axioms we have influences the abstract system we are
exploring. So what axioms should one choose when exploring a certain system? A set
of axioms should be a small and well-understood set of statements. These statements
do not have to be as evident (or well-established) as the axioms we have chosen in this
chapter. The axioms we have chosen in this chapter have something to do with
geometry. Maybe you know about geometry from school. What you certainly do not
know from school are dierent sets of axioms used in geometry. Geometry is part of
mathematics, and mathematics is all about exploring dierent abstract systems. At
school, you do not learn to explore abstract systems much. You mainly learn to use
them. You learn how to count, add, multiply, and things like that. Thats all very good,
but its also good to understand whats behind it.

There are two more things I want to tell you about sets of axioms. Each of these things
is a property of a set of axioms, and it is a property we want the set to have.

First of all, it should not be possible to use a set of axioms to prove both a proposition
and its denial. Imagine, for example, that you construct a set of axioms that you want to
use to explore a squirrel that lives in the garden by the house you live in. Then you will
use some of your axioms to prove the proposition that this squirrel surely must like to
cover its head with its tail when it is snowing. If this is the case, then it cannot be
possible to use the same set of axioms to prove the proposition that the same squirrel
surely must not like to cover its head with its tail when it is snowing. That would be a socalled contradiction, and the set of axioms would be said to be inconsistent. Every set
of axioms must be consistent, otherwise you cannot use it. Here is another example
using the set of axioms we have constructed in this chapter. We have used these
axioms to prove that we can have a triangle. That was the first proposition we proved. If
we could also use these axioms to prove a proposition that we cannot have a triangle,
the axioms would be inconsistent.

The second thing is that in a set of axioms it should not be possible to prove one of the
axioms using any of the other axioms. Look at the set of axioms we have constructed
earlier in this chapter and try to prove any one of them using the other two. You will not
be able to do that. That means all of the axioms in the set are independent. But if such
a thing were possible, if one of the axioms was dependent, we could just call the proven
axiom a proposition, and move on. So it would not be as bad as having an inconsistent
set of axioms.

Thats all I wanted to tell you about sets of axioms used for abstract systems. The next
chapter will be less mentally demanding, but much more intellectually important.

Sets of axioms for physical systems

In the last chapter we were exploring only abstract things. When exploring physical
systems, we will find out that we will also explore many abstract things that have
something to do with the physical system being explored. Lets say we want to explore a
squirrel that lives in our garden. The physical system is our garden, and everything thats
part of it, including the little squirrel. We then observe the squirrel jumping from branch
to branch, crushing acorns with its teeth, taking care of its young ones, and perhaps
even covering its head with its tail when it is snowing. Now jumping from branch to
branch, crushing acorns with ones teeth, taking care of ones ospring and covering
ones head with ones tail are all abstract things, but in order to explore them we need to
observe the physical thing. We need to observe the little squirrel. And we might not only
observe it, or listen to it - we might also collect information about it by using some
measuring device, like, for example, a stopwatch.

In the end we are mostly not exploring the squirrel as a physical thing. We are exploring
the abstract things the squirrel produces while living in our garden. But we say we are
exploring a physical system, because we need to collect information produced by
physical things in order to prove our propositions. And so the axioms and ways of
proving propositions are very much dierent from those that we talked about in the last
chapter.

Let us first talk about the sets of axioms we are going to use when exploring physical
systems. When exploring an abstract system, a set of axioms is a starting point we
declare to be true and do not ever worry about actually showing to be true. When we
then use the set of axioms to prove something, we know it must be true. With a physical
system it is a bit dierent. Some axioms we must declare to be true, but other axioms
we only assume to be true. This means that there is a way of showing the assumed
axioms are true. There is a way of proving these axioms. The way to do this is (again) by
collecting information about a physical thing by observing, measuring, and such. This is
called obtaining empirical evidence. Empirical evidence is often a result of a so-called
experiment. Experiment is when we do something, in a physical system, in order to find
out if some proposition is true or not. Propositions about physical systems are often
called hypotheses. I know, lot of new words just bear with me, it is important to be
able to use these words. Let us look at a simple example. You are observing a squirrel
living in your garden - sounds familiar? You think of an interesting question and then
formulate a hypothesis. It might go like this - The squirrel in my garden is very shy. This
means that each time you try to approach it, it scampers o. This will be your
experiment. You wait near the tree the squirrel lives on and when it comes down you
walk towards it. When you do that, it immediately runs away. You have now collected
some empirical evidence in favour of your hypothesis by observing the squirrel while
you were performing an experiment. But this does not mean that you can say that the
hypothesis is true, and that the squirrel is indeed shy. Actually, no hypothesis can ever

be considered true - or fact. This is how physical systems work and I will give you an
example in a moment.

Remember that experiments are very important. We have all performed experiments.
Every child performs simple experiments to learn about the world and how things work.
Even little squirrels perform experiments (hihi). Sometimes you do not perform
experiments, you just observe things. If every squirrel you have observed in your life had
brown fur, you might want to assume that every other squirrel in the world also has
brown fur. You could write this down as your hypothesis. Hypothesis: All squirrels have
brown fur. The more squirrels with brown fur you come across, the more empirical
evidence you collect in favour of your hypothesis. But you can never be sure that every
squirrel has brown fur, because you can never be sure that you have seen every squirrel
in the world. In fact, no matter how probable your hypothesis looks, it only takes one
squirrel to completely ruin it. As soon as you come across at least one squirrel whose
fur is not brown - lets say a black squirrel - your hypothesis will be proven wrong. And
you will know that all squirrels do not have brown fur. So it does not matter how many
brown squirrels live in your garden and at other places, the hypothesis about all squirrels

having brown fur can never be proven right, and as soon as one black squirrel runs by,
its game over.

Let us now look at examples of axioms declared to be true when exploring a physical
system. One of them assumes that the physical universe exists. It can be stated like this
- Particles exist. Now we can be sure that there is something to obtain empirical
evidence about. Another axiom would be - In the physical universe, same conditions
always lead to the same result. This axiom also assumes something about the physical
universe, and therefore about every physical system. It guarantees that the same
empirical evidence will be obtained if the conditions of a physical system are the same.

When you are doing an experiment, because you want to obtain some empirical
evidence, you are doing this in the physical universe. You are a physical thing, and there
are many other physical things around you. Now you will remember that every physical
thing is made up of many tiny physical things called particles. The whole physical
universe is made up of these tiny particles. It turns out that each particle is moving at all
times. It is moving relative to pretty much every other physical thing. Let me shortly
explain this. If you are standing at your window looking outside at a little squirrel
jumping from one tree branch to another, the squirrel is moving relative to you. You are
actually both moving relative to each other, but you are not moving relative to the
ground, and the squirrel is. Now if we would want to truly explore any physical system,
we would have to be able to explore every particle is contains. We would have to know
where the particle is, where it is going, what its doing but this is not possible. If we try
to explore a particle we find out that the more we know about where it is, the less we
can know about its movement. And it also works the other way around. The more we try
to find out about its movement, the less we can find out about where it is. We can never
know both of these things about a particle at the same time. So we do not have much
control over the particles, which means that we can never obtain exact information
(empirical data) about the physical system we are exploring. This is why we also often
choose to ignore some particles or some physical things that are otherwise part of the
physical system we are exploring. We might for example ignore the interaction of air
particles with some things, just to make things simpler. We might even assume that
physical things are not made up of particles and find out what results we get about our
physical system, and what predictions we will then be able to make. We can, after all,
choose whatever axioms we want. And because we will never be able to explore and
know enough about the particles in our system, we will never explore the system itself,
we will only explore a so-called model of the system.

Here is an example of a set of axioms used in some model of a physical system:

1. Every physical thing is made up of particles that are constantly moving in a random way

2. There are gaps between the particles

3. Attractive and repulsive forces are present among the particles

This model assumes that every physical thing in the system is made up of particles, but
like I said, it could assume that physical things are not made up of particles. Such a
model might be much easier to understand and still provide good enough predictions
about the system.

If you still do not understand what a model is try to remember what we did in the last
chapter. I am sure you can remember we were working with an abstract thing called
circle. I am sure you will agree that circle has a certain area, the size of which depends
on the size of its radius. The centre of a circle is a point, another abstract thing. What
area does a point have? Thats right, it has no area. But now go back to your paper and
pencil, and draw a point. It doesnt matter how tiny you draw it, on the paper it will
always have an area. Thats because there is no point on the paper. It is just a model of
a point. It is just some of the material your pencil is made up of. It is similar with the line.
Line has no width, but a model of a line on your paper always has some width, no
matter how slim your line will be. If it had no width on the paper, it would be invisible.
And just like we can model abstract things, we can model physical things by assuming
something about them. These are two dierent kinds of modelling, but understanding
one can make it easier to understand the other.

Before we will be finished with this chapter, let us briefly talk about a very important
thing. Imagine you have two things. Both are abstract, but related to physical things. Let
us say that one of the things is walking towards a squirrel that lives in your garden, and
the other thing is the squirrel that lives in your garden running away when somebody
walks towards it. What we now can do is find out what relationship there is between
these two things. The way we explore that is we take one of these things and make it
happen, or just observe it happening. We then observe the other thing, in order to find
out if it also happens or not. We might be doing this because we want to test a
hypothesis. For example our hypothesis might be that every time we walk towards a
squirrel, it runs away. And because we want to obtain lot of empirical evidence about
this hypothesis, we would walk towards the squirrel many times, and see how many of
these times it actually runs away from us. This gives us a relationship between the two
things. We can then see that when we increase the number of times one of these things
happens, the number of times the other thing happens maybe also increases, or just
stays the same, or maybe even decreases (although this last relationship is not possible
for any of the examples given here). Another example could be one with the abstract
things being being a villager and having a garden next to ones house. In order to
explore the relationship between these two abstract things we could then find some
villagers and find out if they have gardens next to their houses. Or we could explore the
relationship between being a squirrel and covering ones head with ones tail when it is
snowing. Either way, whatever the relationship we find between our two things it does
not mean that one of these things is causing the other. A relationship between two
things is called a correlation. So even if every squirrel we observe during wintertime
does cover its head with its tail when it is snowing, it does not mean the being a squirrel

causes this. It does not mean that it is innate for a squirrel to do this. This is similar to
not knowing if it is innate, or natural, for squirrel to have brown fur. What we often want
to do is to find out if one of the things we are dealing with does cause the other, and
sometimes we can find this out. We could for example explore the part of the DNA every
member of the squirrel species should have (I dont have time to explain what DNA and
species are, just ask a smart-looking grown-up about it) and find out that squirrels can
have only brown fur. This would still not mean that we could be sure that every squirrel
indeed does have brown fur (even when we leave out those squirrels somebody has
painted), just because one thing causes another does not mean that it always will cause
it. But if we do find out that one of the things causes the other, the relationship between
the two things is no longer only a correlation, but also a causality (or a cause-eect
relationship).

Maybe you have already heard about disciplines like physics, biology, astronomy,
chemistry. These disciplines explore physical systems. If lot of empirical evidence is
obtained in favour of a hypotheses in such a discipline the hypothesis becomes a
theory. Some people sometimes think that when something is called theory it should
not be taken too seriously, because it isnt a fact. But there are no facts when it comes
to exploring physical systems, theory is as good as it gets. Like I already told you - you
can never be sure that every squirrel has brown fur.

The last thing we need to talk about is peer-review. Think about the following thing. Let
us say that I have a hypothesis that I have tested many times. I collected lot of empirical
evidence in favour of my hypothesis and I am happy to tell you all about it. But do you
trust me? Maybe I am just making it all up. Maybe I just wanna look cool. Like a squirrel
covering its head when it is snowing wearing sunglasses. So what do you do. Do you
do the experiments and observations yourself in order to personally check this? That
can take up lot of time. If everybody would think like that then everybody would
probably be running around performing experiments and such there must be another
solution. Well, here it is. Let us choose several people, independent of each other, who
will perform the experiments and observations in order to check the results. This is
called peer-review. The results are checked by many dierent people, such that it is
almost impossible for them to lie, because there are so many of them. Soon we will talk
about social systems, where peer-review also plays an important role when it comes to
obtaining information. So if you want to obtain information about something - be it a
hypothesis or not - make sure you obtain the information from a source that has good
peer-review. Good peer-review means that other sources have checked the information
that source provides. Then you can be almost sure the information is not made up.

Belief systems
So far we have learnt about what sets of axioms to use when exploring physical and
abstract systems. After we chose our axioms, we started proving things about the
system. Each set of axioms was then related to a set of proven propositions or theories.
So in the end we have three things - the set of axioms, the set of proven proposition or
theories, and the system we are exploring. And before we start proving propositions or
obtaining empirical evidence for hypotheses we only have two things - the set of axioms
we chose and the system we want to explore. Now imagine never actually obtaining a
set of proven proposition or theories. Imagine just choosing axioms and never actually
working with the system. You just make statements about the system and never actually
explore it. You just declare things to be true and leave it at that. This might seem like a
lot of nonsense, but it is important to also talk about it. You then have the set of axioms
and the system, which is almost certainly a physical system. But you will never work
with this system, you will never explore it, so you might as well just put it aside and
concentrate on the set of axioms. This is a set of axioms about a physical system, and it
is not used to obtain theories. Axioms are abstract things, so this set of axioms is
actually also an abstract system - since it is a collection of abstract things. And because
it is not used to obtain any theories, it is called a belief system.

A belief system is a set of axioms about a physical system, whereby the axioms are not
used in order to be able to provide evidence for hypotheses about the system. All of the
axioms are (absolute) declarations about the system, and no empirical evidence is
obtained. Probably the most well known examples of belief systems are religions. Each
religion has a book that contains all of the axioms. Such a book is often called a holy
book. Religions are known for containing many axioms (up to thousands). Some of
these axioms could not really be treated as hypotheses, because it is dicult to obtain
empirical evidence for them - they might be statements about things that are said to
have happened in the past or to will have happened in the future. Religions are also
known for containing axioms about abstract things (like for example god) that are said
to exist independently of the physical system. But there is still an advantage to belief
systems (otherwise they would not exist in the form they do). You know that you are a
physical system, since you are a collection of physical things. This physical system also
contains many abstract things that the things in the system (you) produce. Examples of
these abstract things are: things you say, skills you have, hugs you give to those you
care about, and others. Now you might ask - Will this physical system (me) be always
producing these or similar abstract things? The answer to this question, supported by
empirical evidence, is no. But you might not like that answer, so you could choose
axioms that change the answer to a yes. This is similar to modelling (see last chapter),
but again, the model is not explored. Another thing you might ask would be - Is there
maybe an abstract thing that could continue producing these abstract things after the
physical system can no longer do that? This is a very typical question, mainly because

no empirical evidence can be obtained in order to try to answer it. So here a belief
system can again be helpful.

Other examples of belief systems are homeopathy and astrology.

The last thing we need to talk about is the word belief. Why are belief systems called
belief systems? Belief is when you think something is true, but you cannot obtain
empirical evidence for it. But there is also another way of using this word. When you are
sitting at home with a friend, and he asks you if you think there is a squirrel sitting in
front of the front door, he could ask you - Do you believe there is a squirrel sitting in front
of the front door? He could say that, even though you can obtain empirical evidence
about it. You can go to the front door and open it. Is there a squirrel sitting there? No.
Thought so. (Hes probably jumping on the tree in the garden). Now there you go, you
have obtained empirical evidence. You can now go back to your friend and tell him
about it. So even when empirical evidence can be obtained, the word believe is often
used, because one does not have the empirical evidence at that moment.

Social systems
Let us now briefly talk about social systems. Social systems are physical systems,
whereby the physical things contained in these systems are people. But that does not
mean that each group of people is a social system. These people must produce certain
abstract things, and they must not do this independently of each other - then we can
talk about a social system. Let us mention some examples of these abstract things that
you might already know. Music, architecture (what buildings people build), religion,
language (how people speak and write), literature (what people write), dance, paintings,
Many of these things may be created by only one person, but as long as that person
is exposed to the other things that are part of one social system, his or her creations are
also taken to be part of that social system. The collection of all of the abstract things
that are part of a social system is called culture. Social systems often also contain
certain rules that the members of the social system - the people - must respect and not
break. Rules are abstract things, an example of a rule could be: Each member must not
take things that belong to another member. In some social systems, these rules can be
chosen (or determined) by all of the members of the social systems, but most social
systems are too large (contain too many people) in order to do this. So how do larger
social systems choose their rules? Well, the only solution is to first choose a smaller
group of people, all of which are members of that social system, and these people then
choose the rules. But this only shifts the problem. Now we need to find out how to
choose this smaller group of people. And this is actually something that must be chosen
by all of the members of the social system - meaning that each member should be given
the possibility to choose a group of people that will then choose the rules. But you can
of course not choose any group of people. What happens is that there will be certain
groups of people, and each member of the social system can then choose one of them.
If all members of a social system choose the same group of people, this group will then
be the group that will choose all the rules - but this is not what usually happens. Instead,
dierent people choose dierent groups. We then have one group that the largest
number of people have chosen, and all the other groups, that smaller numbers of people
have chosen. Now it can become a bit complicated. Generally, only two things can
happen. Either the group that the largest number of people have chosen will choose all
the rules (this is called disproportionate representation), or each group that some
people have chosen will choose the rules together with all the other groups some
people have chosen1 (this is called proportional representation). Whether a social
system should use proportional or disproportionate representation depends mainly on
the ability of the members of that social system to communicate with each other. If the
members are capable of talking about things and working together, they will be able to
use proportional representation, which is fairer compared to disproportionate
representation.

Usually, however, a minimal number of people have to choose a certain group, so that that group
can be able to choose the rules together with the other groups

But why are there many dierent groups? What makes them dierent? Is it because
each group wants to choose dierent rules? Thats right. Let us now look at the dierent
kinds of rules a social system can have. We can split them up into two dierent kinds.
The first kind is a one that allows members of a social system to share more, the other a
one that allows them to share less. Let us talk about what to share might mean. Let us
say that you are a member of a group of friends - you and your school friends. Let us
say your grandma bakes lot of pies for you. Your friends on the other hand, do not get
enough things to eat from their parents and are always hungry. You do get enough to
eat, and not only that, you also get lot of pies. Actually, you get more pies than you can
eat. So it might be a good idea to give some of your pies to your friends. Maybe, in
return, they will respect you and honour you more than they would otherwise. Because
you have been kind to them. You cared for them. And if you wouldnt care for each other
enough, maybe you would think it a good idea to choose a rule like this: Each member
of this group of friends must give some pies to the other members if he obtains more
pies from his grandma (or another grown-up) than he alone can eat. This is an example
of a rule that supports sharing. Rules that support sharing are said to be more on the
left. Rules that do not support sharing are said to be more on the right. This is just an
example related to a group of young friends, in most social systems sharing pies
becomes providing health care to those who need it, providing education to everybody,
providing a place to live, and so on. These might all be very complex things you have
never heard about, but in the end it all comes down to the same idea of helping each
other. Just like with your group of friends.

It is much easier for members of a social system to share and work together with other
members if they care for each other. It is also less likely that somebody will take
advantage of rules that support sharing. So if members of a social system care for each
other more, the social system will have rules that are more on the left. If this is not the
case, and members of a social system are more independent and care less for other
members, such social system will have rules more on the right. Each social system is
trying to find out if their rules should be more on the left, or more on the right.
Sometimes, this can be quite dicult.

Before moving on to the last chapter it is important to mention that many social systems
are called societies. They are usually a bit larger, and when they are large enough and
occupy a certain area, they often form countries. The rules of a country are then called
laws.

Language
Let us shortly talk about language. Language is a system used for communication. It is
made up of abstract things like words, sounds, grammar, signs, and others. Language is
produced by physical things, most often groups of people (squirrels also have their
language, even though they cant speak). Let us talk about languages produced only by
groups of people. Such languages are often related to certain societies, meaning that
they are part of a certain culture.

Now there are two kinds of languages. One of them is constant (not changing with time)
and the other is not. You can read about the constant language in a book, where it is
described how the abstract things that make up that language work - on their own and
together with other abstract things. It is said how words are to be spelled, maybe even
pronounced. It is said what meanings each word can have. For example if I say to you Whats the point? - I might be talking about a mathematical thing (the same as we
mentioned previously when talking about sets of axioms used for abstract systems) or I
might be talking about the meaning of something. It is also said what the rules for using
words together are (for example what order they are written in). The collection of these
rules is called grammar. Other things about the language are written down and
because they are written down, they are constant.

The other language is a one that is not described by being written down, but by being
spoken. And unlike the first language that can be written down by only one person, this
language is not spoken by only one person, but by anybody who speaks it when
communicating with other people. And it is not constant not only with respect to time
(meaning that it will change if you wait long enough), but also with respect to where you
are. This means that if you change your position (lets say you travel in a certain direction
- if you live in a village maybe you visit another village) the language changes.

I think we have now talked about everything I wanted to talk to you about. I invite you to
take that which you have gained while reading this book and apply it whenever you
please. I wish you all the best.