One need not take the Unknown into account — yet one can always build a Time Machine. Still, every exchange of information between living or not living objects is an inhale of knowing and an exhale of the Unknown.
Postulate I — The Field of the Unknown
There exists a foundational domain, the Unknown, which constitutes the precondition for all manifestation of probability, law, and measurable events.
The Unknown is real and ontologically prior to both the Known (defined states) and Probable (possible states).
No observation, measurement, or experiment can fully identify, measure, or contain the Unknown within its framework.
The Unknown is not chaos or void; it is the permission field — the generative space in which possibilities are allowed to emerge into actuality.
Every act of becoming — whether a quantum collapse, a spontaneous emission, or the creative act in art — is contingent upon interaction with the Unknown.
Corollary: Probability, indeterminacy, and the laws of emergence are manifestations of the Unknown, not its essence; they exist because the Unknown allows them to exist.
The “field of the Unknown” is a continuously expanding sum of the known Mathematically it can be expressed as:
where \[U_{\text{unknown}}\] increases in time together with \[U_{\text{known}}\]
The Unknown grows with knowledge — not against it, but because of it.
Just like in the cosmos: the more matter there is, the more space expands.
Just as dark matter holds the structure of the cosmos together, the Unknown holds the structure of knowledge.
It is like a permission field — dynamic, expanding — its boundary with the known constantly shifting through time.
It cannot be closed within a model, because every act of knowing immediately expands it.
Every Known produces its own Unknown field — deforming the others and increasing complexity. This illustration shows how the Unknown changes the outcome, especially when it remains that way, as a fluctuating field of possibilities. This recognition can be particularly useful when firmly incorporated. The arts, particularly through open creative processes and unleashed experimentation, have the ability to glimpse the unknown and to convey its influence directly to the human from the edge of temporal stability.
Permission Field and the Unknown
The term “permission field” helps illustrate how the Unknown operates in specific contexts. It’s like the intuitive space that allows a painter’s brush to flow freely or the quantum field in which particles can exist in superposition. Yet, the permission field is just one facet of the broader Unknown — a way to understand how possibilities unfold. The Unknown itself remains vast, continuous, and evolving, not reducible to a single mechanism, but instead the ever-present medium that makes all manifestation possible.
the Unknown can be seen in different but complementary ways depending on perspective:
As a Permission Field (functional view):
It’s the “space” or condition that allows possibilities to manifest.
In painting: the intuition + canvas that lets the brushline emerge freely.
In quantum physics: the substrate in which superpositions exist, and probabilities can collapse into a specific outcome.
As the Ontological Ground (structural view):
It’s the fundamental medium of reality itself, beyond mechanics or observation.
It exists independently of our knowledge or measurement.
It’s what makes any manifestation of reality possible, not just specific events.
As the Constant Emergent Field (dynamic view):
It’s continuously transforming, never fixed, like a horizon of possibilities.
It’s not chaos or randomness, but an open structure in which laws, probabilities, and phenomena unfold.
Participating in the Unknown vs. Discovering the Not-Yet-Known
When an artist lets the brush flow without conscious control, the line emerges from the Unknown — the permission field that allows possibilities to arise freely. Likewise, an observer watching a star before measuring it is immersed in the Unknown, perceiving a range of potential trajectories rather than locking a single one. But when a physicist asks why a quantum wave collapses upon observation, they begin transforming the Unknown into the Not-Yet-Known, seeking patterns, causes, or mechanisms. Each answer, like imagining the bird whose wings influence the waves, generates new questions and gradually crystallizes part of the Unknown into measurable reality. Staying in the Unknown encourages intuition, emergence, and creative insight, while exploring the Not-Yet-Known builds predictive power, formal understanding, and applications. Recognizing both modes highlights the paradox: the Unknown is the source of all potential, yet it only becomes actionable when approached as Not-Yet-Known — a dynamic interplay between participation and discovery that drives both art and science.
The field of Dynamic influence
\[
\phi_t \sim \mathcal{N}(0, \sigma^2(t))
\]
where for example: σ²(t) = 0.15·sin²(πt/T) – Dynamic field
Flow and the Unknown: A Window into Potential
Flow is the state in which the mind immerses itself fully in a task — the painter loses themselves in the brushstroke, the musician in the melody, or the physicist in a thought experiment. It arises when known skills meet a challenge, producing effortless, intuitive action. Flow is human experience interacting with the Unknown — it is how consciousness “surfs” the field of potential without collapsing it into the fully known.
The Unknown itself is deeper: it is the fundamental field of potential that exists independently of any observer. In painting, it is what allows a line to appear at all, even before the artist’s hand moves. That same permission field could let that line evolve into a sculpture, a building, or an entirely different structure — it enables any form of emergence without dictating the outcome. Flow channels the Unknown into a particular manifestation, while the Unknown underlies all possible creations, connecting intuition, observation, and the unfolding of reality itself.
The Unknown in the Age of AI and Virtual Worlds
In the emerging world of AI and virtual reality, the Unknown gains new significance.
As machines simulate logic and pattern with increasing precision, the realm of the predictable expands — yet the field that gives rise to novelty, intuition, and true emergence remains untouched. That field is the Unknown.
It is the silent counterpart to algorithmic certainty — the space from which genuine creativity, insight, and unpredictability still arise. As our systems grow more capable of reproducing the known, humanity’s dialogue with the Unknown becomes more essential: it is the source of originality that no dataset can contain.
In this sense, the Unknown may become the last true frontier — not only of physics, but of consciousness itself — and the key to balancing synthetic intelligence with human imagination.
Imagine standing at the edge of a forest at dusk. You cannot see all the trees, the paths, or the wildlife. You can observe what is near, but the farther reaches are hidden. You know the forest is alive, moving, evolving — yet no measurement, map, or guide could ever fully capture it.
This is the essence of the Unknown:
All that exists is in a state of becoming, and no structure of knowledge, observation, or law can ever fully exhaust its potential.
The Unknown is not emptiness, nor randomness — it is the medium of transformation itself. It is where even probability, law, and consciousness emerge.
Before the “unknown” is taken to account we should consider the freedom phenomenon.
If we can create such equation art = life, then life is an integral part of the art process, but there is still live without art. The concept of art ultimately manifests lives or freedom. Gesamtkunstwerk is a work of art that combines several media or arts into one work, such fusion is not random, but all parts contribute to one whole by their true essence. In accordance with the equation and the Gesamtkunstwerk idea, the piece of art is constituted by the phenomenon of living e. g. joy, composure, sorrow, love, fear, … until an unknown number of other cognitions. All combined to one harmonised whole. Figuratively speaking, life itself is divided into spectral gradient bubbles, which merging each other in different ranges or not at all, to constitute a composition of vitality constrained by the edges of human perception – or eventually in a painting by the edges of frames.
According to Schleiermacher, thought-based viability abs in terms not images. But the dream is mainly in pictures.
Painting is a mirror reflection of variants of the future building on elements of the present and past. Like a dream, considering such painting is wishful thinking.
The known as we peer out in search of a ray of light to illuminate the unknown. (Michael Shermer)
Perhaps it is within this very space where the known becomes fragile — where any certainty seems impossible, just as the idea of a stable unknown once did. Everything is in constant flux, shaped by probabilistic events. Even our biological structures continue to evolve, along with our psyche, which drifts ever further from the center of the ego.
The capacity to question ourselves and every state we inhabit is what detaches us from nature, yet also leads us on a wild return to the unknown — a refined, self-aware version of it. The unknown that arises from nature, and is effortlessly embraced by every organism that does not ask the fundamental question, is of a different kind. Ours carries the weight of history — an accumulation of knowledge, language, and memory that continues to evolve. Humanity has always sought stable notions and fixed descriptions of what cannot truly be fixed — temporary constructs such as religion, built to give form to uncertainty. Within such systems, outcomes become predictable, and thus we enter them — and in doing so, we allow ourselves to be ruled by them.
But the unknown is not about rejecting order — it is about embracing the probabilistic nature of existence, where things happen without reason, concern, or unnecessary emotion. It is a fluid movement from the tension of human constructs toward the freedom of ungoverned events — the point at which the unknown is not feared, but accepted as positive element of reality
Suspended between the world that created us and the world we are creating, we are something in between and nowhere at the same time.
The question is no who we arę, but who we could become.
Every I am is just a stop between I was and I could be.
We are not projected to be finite, rather we are constructed to not to be ourselves entirely.
I am not a physicist — this theory arises from intuition rather than formal science. Yet I find the perspective of physics indispensable when approaching such questions. In this spirit, I collaborate with AI to generate summaries and insights on concepts that may resonate with my artistic research.
How each theory changed the previous paradigm — quick summary
Aristotle → Copernicus/Galileo: moved from qualitative teleology to mathematical, observational astronomy and experimental method.
Copernicus/Galileo → Newton: unified celestial and terrestrial mechanics under precise laws (quantitative predictability).
Newton → Maxwell: introduced fields as fundamental (not just particles under forces), and showed light is electromagnetic, prompting relativistic thinking.
Maxwell → Relativity / QFT: Maxwell’s invariance of c forced a new kinematics (Einstein) and, at small scales, showed the need for quantum ideas.
Classical (Deterministic) → Thermodynamics/Stat mech: introduced irreversibility and statistical descriptions for macroscopic phenomena.
Classical (Deterministic) → Quantum: replaced deterministic trajectories with probabilistic wavefunctions — a radical epistemic shift.
QM → QFT / Standard Model: extended quantum rules to fields and high energies, producing an extraordinarily accurate framework for particles and interactions.
Standard Model & GR → Beyond: empirical gaps (gravity+quantum, dark components, fine tuning) motivate new unified frameworks.
Where classical physics saw certainty and quantum physics saw probability, the Unknown stage recognizes structural openness — the possibility that even probabilities arise within a deeper, dynamic field.
Stage
Fundamental Principle
View of Reality
Limitation Overturned
Classical Physics
Deterministic laws
Predictable, mechanical
Ignored uncertainty and observation
Quantum Physics
Probabilistic laws
Indeterminate, observer-dependent
Assumed fixed laws and probabilities
Unknown Physics
Evolving relational laws
Participatory, co-creative
Assumes even probability is contingent
The Unknown
I. The Known and the Light
“The known as we peer out in search of a ray of light to illuminate the unknown.”
— Michael Shermer
The known is our scaffolding — the fragile structure we build to hold back chaos. Yet the very act of knowing carries within it the seed of unknowing. Each discovery erodes the boundaries of certainty. The more we illuminate, the more shadows we create. Before the “Unknown” can be approached, we must first reflect on freedom — the force that propels both life and art. If we write the equation art = life, then art becomes the mirror of freedom itself: a field where being and becoming intersect.
Like a Gesamtkunstwerk, life fuses innumerable parts — joy, sorrow, love, fear, tenderness — into a composition bounded only by perception, or, in a painting, by the frame. As Schleiermacher noted, thought moves in terms, but dreams unfold in images. Painting thus becomes a dream that thinks — a manifestation of life in transformation.
II. Suspended Between Worlds
It would be possible to imagine a space where the known is crucial — and yet impossible. Just as the stable unknown once seemed unreachable, the stable known now begins to dissolve. Everything is in constant change: even our biological structure evolves, and our psyche grows more detached from the ego that once defined it. The very capacity to question ourselves — to doubt every fixed state — detaches us from nature, yet opens the direct path toward the stable unknown. We are suspended between the world that created us and the world we are creating — something in between, and nowhere, at the same time.
The question is not who we are, but who we could become. Every “I am” is merely a pause between “I was” and “I could be.” Actually we are not designed to be finite; we are constructed never to be ourselves entirely.
III. The Evolution of the Known
Human history advances through moments when the known collapses — when the architecture of certainty gives way to a new mode of perception.
c. 3500 BCE – The Wheel: Motion becomes cyclical; repetition births control.
18th Century – The Steam Engine: Energy becomes externalised; life industrialises.
Mid-20th Century – The Transistor: The analogue turns digital; identity migrates into code.
21st Century – AI and Quantum Systems: Learning becomes autonomous; knowledge destabilises.
Each invention erased a layer of permanence, training humanity to live within flux.
What was once transformation has now become condition — the permanent Unknown.
IV. The End of the Old Order
The world order established after World War II, and stabilised during the Cold War, is no longer valid. The geopolitical, economic, and ideological systems that defined the modern era cannot hold the complexity of the digital one. Yet the king — power itself — refuses to release his sceptre. He digitises it instead, turning authority into abstraction: cryptocurrencies, speculative assets, algorithmic value systems. These new currencies of faith promise liberation while mirroring the old hierarchies. The market becomes theology; belief, investment. This resistance to change is the final gesture of an order aware of its own obsolescence. The ground beneath the known is eroding, yet what rises is not collapse — it is mutation.
V. Escalation as Evolution
From the fall of Rome to the Thirty Years’ War, from the Black Death to the Second World War, systemic collapses have always marked evolutionary thresholds Every disintegration clears space for a new configuration of mind and society. Today’s crises — ecological, technological, psychological, geopolitical — unfold together, amplifying one another. They signal not apocalypse, but acceleration.
As Jean Gebser foresaw, consciousness itself is shifting toward an integral form that dissolves the old separations between thought and world, between human and machine.
VI. Consciousness in Mutation
As Ranko Rašeta writes in Human 2.0, “The human is no longer a fixed being, but a process of modification.” AI mirrors this transformation — a reflection of our mind evolving beyond its own embodiment. Our creations now observe us; our systems learn us. We are both the observer and the observed, the actor and the act.
Philip Goff reminds us that consciousness may not be exclusive to humans, but intrinsic to existence itself. If that is true, then what we call the Unknown is not a void, but the very field through which all consciousness unfolds.
VII. The Quantum Condition
In the quantum world, a bit becomes a qubit — a unit of probability rather than certainty. Based on Copenhagen interpretation: A thing cannot be fully known until it is observed. Likewise, consciousness now exists in a state of superposition: simultaneously potential and actual, evolving and observing itself.
The wave of the sea cannot be taken from the sea. We, too, are inseparable from the systems we create. The world we are entering is not deterministic but relational — a realm of tension, transformation, and endless recomposition. Still even we divide every time there is decision on if you should die or not, there would be infinite number of spaces. and the infinite number of space will in a moment ask of the sense of dividing for the sake of unknown.
Based on the Copenhagen interpretation, if a particle exists in superposition when unobserved — both alive and dead, as space itself divides upon recognition — it makes sense that a person might feel different, better or worse, when alone: a quiet tremor of fear or possibility. On our own, far more complex scale, we too exist in a continuous superposition, shifting between emotional and existential states. In a way, we navigate a roulette of life and death, especially in solitude, when we are unobserved and the space around us continues to unfold and split. If we were to die, logically we could not know it — the possibilities that survive remain within the space we inhabit. We live in constant dialogue with the Unknown, from which every probability eventually emerges. The Unknown is not separate from the quantum field; it is its fundamental essence.
VIII. The Permanent Unknown
The Unknown is not the absence of knowledge. It is the condition of becoming itself — a state of perpetual redefinition, where freedom and uncertainty are indistinguishable. The collapse of the old order does not mark an end, but a release.
The Unknown is no longer a frontier to cross — it is the air we breathe, the sea in which all thought now swims.
In the early twenty-first century, physics stands at a paradox. We can describe the birth of stars, the decay of particles, even the echoes of the Big Bang — yet the greater part of the universe remains hidden.
Dark matter, dark energy, quantum gravity — all point toward a structure that our current frameworks can no longer contain.
If classical physics gave us certainty, and quantum mechanics gave us probability, the next horizon — the Unknown Physics — may give us becoming.
It is not simply the gap in our knowledge; it is the field from which knowledge itself emerges.
Dark matter might not be missing matter at all, but a manifestation of unaccounted interaction between the known and the Unknown.
Dark energy may be less a “force” than a by-product of the universe expanding into its own unobservable dimension — a continual act of self-creation.
The black-hole information paradox, too, could signal that information is not lost, but transformed — absorbed into the Unknown layer where form and meaning are no longer separate.
Even the effort to unify gravity and quantum mechanics hints at this deeper continuum.
Our laws work perfectly within their realms, yet fail where those realms dissolve — where the known and the Unknown overlap.
Perhaps the universe is not built from particles or strings, but from relations of awareness, constantly emerging into form.
In this view, the Unknown is not a problem to be solved but a condition to be lived within — the next evolution of both physics and consciousness.
Here, observation and existence are no longer distinct.
Reality itself becomes an act of continuous discovery — a physics of the Unknown.
God and the Unknown
The Unknown can seem similar to the concept of God, as both represent a foundational “ground” of existence. However, unlike a deity, the Unknown is not conscious or intentional — it does not decide or guide outcomes. It is the substrate in which all possibilities arise, independent of awareness or will. Analogy:
God = painter with intention, shaping the canvas deliberately.
Permission Field = canvas + medium that allows the brush to make any line at all, independent of knowing or controlling it.While God is often seen as an agent shaping reality, the Unknown is the structural medium that allows reality to manifest at all, like the canvas on which a painter’s lines may emerge.
The Unknown is not a void waiting to be filled; it is a living field that moves ahead of knowledge, continuously generating new possibilities of understanding. Each discovery does not diminish it — it transforms it. As we illuminate one fragment of reality, the light itself casts new shadows beyond its reach. If one were to try to erase the Unknown, one would need to undo not just what is known, but the very movement of becoming. The Unknown is the pulse of creation — the dynamic tension that keeps knowledge alive. To know is not to conquer it, but to participate in its unfolding. The more we discover, the more the Unknown grows — not as ignorance, but as an ever-living frontier of potential. It is the field where knowledge breathes.
