What if the oldest question in philosophy could be answered without mystery, infinite regress, or appeals to the supernatural?
Phiism is the modern completion of Pythagorean Illuminism: a rational religion of the European intellectual tradition built on ontological mathematics — the doctrine that existence is mind, that mind is number, and that the structure of nothing itself is the source of everything.
In this volume, Joseph E. Postma derives existence from first principles: eternal, effortless, structured nothing; Euler’s formula in the complex plane; the circling that produces light; the zoo of cyclings underlying matter; the monad as the mathematical soul; and the universe as the collective work of immortal minds reorganizing thought across eternity. Physics is not pasted on from outside. Photons, wave–particle duality, space, time, and the Big Bang are read as projections of what existence is already doing on the inside.
But Phiism is not only metaphysics. The Pythagorean tradition always united reason and life. After establishing the theory, this book turns to practice: Plato’s Form of the Good, holistic Becoming, health and family, education and community, internal divinity without external worship — and the Phi Phase Coherence Training Protocol, a daily practice for aligning the phases of your monadic circlings.
Did you know we can now draw a diagram of what your soul looks like? This book shows you — mathematically.
Whether you are new to Illuminism or already steeped in ontological mathematics, Phiism offers what the foundational literature left open: a locus for living — a philosophy you can argue, plot, and practice.
In this book you will discover:
• A step-by-step derivation of existence from logical first principles — no brute facts, no “God did it,” no “random chance”
• Why the soul is a monad: a complete frequency vocabulary of circlings in the complex plane — with a diagram of what your soul looks like
• How light is projected circling; how matter arises from constrained cyclings; and how the empirical particle zoo may reduce to metaphysical necessity classes
• How Fourier synthesis and the frequency domain connect mind to the extended universe
• Why you are not a mortal body with a soul — you are the soul, an uncreated instance of all possible thought
• A full lifestyle framework for the spiritual intellectual: health, family, education, community, and phase-coherence practice
Climate of Sophistry 
Nice. Just ordered a paper copy.
shared at https://principia-scientific.com/phiism-a-metaphysical-theory-of-everything/
Thanks John!
you are most welcome, Joe. Best wishes with your new book!
Joe you are cooking on the books. You could prob write a 100k novel. I did. Never published though. I think I still have it on a floppy. 😏
Get it out there!
Nothing IS something.
Exactly.
Nothing + Something = the same ONEthing, which we can never know, because we are mere expressions of it below the whole, and the whole cannot grasp itself, because grasping requires boundaries that are finite in space and time, thus “grasping” has no definition in infinity/eternity.
Well except I do define it and know it in that way, knowing its structure and content.
I suppose an argument for a part knowing the whole via itself as a holographic part is defensible. But I think it’s even more complicated than that. The human mind, in my view, is a sort of creative prison, always striving to understand, and that striving is the purpose of existence, and so to understand all would be an end to that striving and purpose. … During my painting days I did a four-piece series that I called “Cosmic Head Pieces”, where, in my mind, this creative prison was the underlying theme nagging at me.
I do explain that cycle too…what happens at that end, and how is it achieved etc.
A fun chat among scientists and an idiot like me. 😏
Ned Nikolov, Ph.D.
@NikolovScience
This comment I just posted to my blog article will help many understand the adiabatic (pressure-induced) Atmospheric Thermal Enhancement (ATE), and why the current climate theory is fundamentally wrong about the “Greenhouse Effect”:
From tallbloke.wordpress.com
Christopher Collins
@CDCollins5269
I agree the GHE is flawed, but the atmosphere is also not a pressure‑only artifact. Yes it is an essential mechanism in the physics. As Doctor Holmes has indicated, Te = ∜0.523 x Tv, but this is not the only factor in shaping atmospheres, layers and boundaries. @1000Frolly
Ned Nikolov, Ph.D.
@NikolovScience
I never said it’s the only factor. I only stated that the Relative Atmospheric Thermal Effect (RATE) of any planet is a sole function of total pressure and independent of atmospheric composition.
Christopher Collins
@CDCollins5269
…but pressure is not an energy source. So if you are acknowledging that, we are in agreement. If not, fair enough anyway.
Dr Robert Ian Holmes PhD
@1000Frolly
Pressure does not create heat and is not an energy source; but it does provide the pre-conditions for efficient convection and the formation of a lapse rate.
Insolation, atmospheric pressure above 10kPa and convection do not ‘create heat’ but they do redistribute energy in a convective cloumn.
Specifically, they redistribute the potential and kinetic energy in the convecting column. That is what causes the Lapse rate in the first place mate!
A convecting column of air will naturally form a lapse rate, and that leads to a thermal gradient, which leads to a surface thermal enhancement. The process is entirely mechanical and is well known gas thermodynamics.
There is no ‘radiative trapping’ and no ‘GHG’ involved.
Christopher Collins
@CDCollins5269
Now
While I agree on nearly all of those points, I prefer to call it radiatively active for it is part of the atmospheric physics. The problem is most stop there. For Earth: Spectral emissions → thermalization → broadband net emissions, in that order.
@CDCollins5269
And on another note, the atmosphere is not a purely mechanical system: It is a radiative–convective system (convection more relative in the troposphere) …all factors shape atmospheric layers and boundaries… Just a friendly observation.
I don’t quite get Holmes’ convecting column of air naturally forming a lapse rate. One molecule of nitrogen will accelerate down or decelerate up a gravitational field, and a collection of them make up a lapse rate.
@J Cuttance Tunnel vision tends to be the curse of expertise in a specific field.
@Joseph E Postma time for me to get schooled again from you😏 I’m going to give you the reply so you can break it down for me.
So, I asked Ned: Can you show me an example In accretion physics where pressure arises before thermal energy or gravitational potential energy? I’m not grasping any viable concept where pressure could be the initiating factor rather than an emergent result of collapse & thermal reactions.
This was the reason I asked: Ned Nikolov, Ph.D.
@NikolovScience
Yes, I know this, but energy cannot exist without some sort of pressure present. That’s because pressure is a force, and energy requires force by definition.
This is why pressure only has a RELATIVE effect on temperature, never absolute. In other words, there is NO one-to-one relationship between temperature and pressure… I’ve explained this 1000 times before!
10:57 PM · Jul 19, 2026
Christopher Collins
@CDCollins5269
If I’m following my statistical QM correctly, energy exists first. Pressure is a derivative of how that energy responds to volume.
P=−(∂E/∂V) S . Which made me think of tensor theory and now pressure & density in an EM field…off topic.
No, that’s a mathematical trick using entropy, which was invented much later (many years after temperature was measured).
Force is a “prerequisite” for energy. So, force comes first… 🙂
Dr Robert Ian Holmes PhD
@1000Frolly
·
22h
Replying to
@CDCollins5269
and
@NikolovScience
Pressure does not create heat and is not an energy source; but it does provide the pre-conditions for efficient convection and the formation of a lapse rate.
Insolation, atmospheric pressure above 10kPa and convection do not ‘create heat’ but they do redistribute energy in a convective cloumn.
Specifically, they redistribute the potential and kinetic energy in the convecting column. That is what causes the Lapse rate in the first place mate!
A convecting column of air will naturally form a lapse rate, and that leads to a thermal gradient, which leads to a surface thermal enhancement. The process is entirely mechanical and is well known gas thermodynamics.
There is no ‘radiative trapping’ and no ‘GHG’ involved.
I should have a video discussion with these guys and show them the lapse rate derivation and even just its formula. dT/dh = -g/Cp + L
There’s no convection required. That equation does not show or contain bulk mechanical movement…i.e. convection. If you really wish to think of convection, the particles are convecting at the molecular scale…convection is always happening at that scale. It’s statistical thermodynamics, which arises as the statistical result at molecular scale of a vast number of elements sharing thermal energy, with gravity applied. Bulk convection is NOT required for that molecular-scale statistical likelihood distribution of energy. The process is mechanical at the molecular scale, not at the bulk scale. Bulk convection does happen yes, and this will actually modify the gradient away from the natural static slope, resulting in weather things. But a tube of perfectly still and tranquil gas with no bulk convection will still have the natural lapse rate of -g/Cp.
I don’t know why they’re so confused about this. It’s so trivial. It’s so simple.
“energy cannot exist without some sort of pressure present”
That’s just a strange and non-sensical statement of which I cannot determine the meaning.
Pressure is force per area; energy doesn’t “require” force.
“energy exists first. Pressure is a derivative of how that energy responds to volume.” – excellent
this got cut off that was Ned:No, that’s a mathematical trick using entropy, which was invented much later (many years after temperature was measured).
Force is a “prerequisite” for energy. So, force comes first… 🙂
Joe,
The dry lapse rate derivation does require convection. It’s in a roundabout way which is easy to miss. The first step of that derivation is the first law of thermodynamics in enthalpy form,
dH = Q + mg = m c_P dT
Next you set Q to zero, assuming an adiabatic process. Then you’re done.
It appears to be fundamental straightforward thermodynamics. The trick is hidden in setting Q to zero.
Why assume an adiabatic process? Normally heat flows all the time. In this derivation you say that parcels of air are whisked around so quickly by buoyancy — that is, convection — that heat does not have time to enter or leave the parcel. The assumption is quite good, because direct heat transfer in air is extraordinarily slow, and convection is very fast. That is why the equation works so well.
So yes, by setting Q = 0, the equation does require convection.
Q is heat, not bulk convection. And again, convection occurs at the molecular scale constantly anyways.
It is solved via local thermodynamic equilibrium only…horizontally.
Total energy is U = mCpT + mgh + c
LTE: dU = 0 = mCp dT + mg dh
Q = 0 isn’t about convection, it’s about thermal equilibrium.
Setting Q = 0 only means no heat; it makes no statement whatsoever about rate of bulk movement in convection. There’s no heat because we assume local thermodynamic equilibrium, not fast convection. Local thermodynamic equilibrium can occur in a perfectly convection-free atmosphere…it would be more difficult for it to exist with rapid convection. There’s still statistical thermal motion at the molecular scale which is what and is all that is required to facilitate distribution of energy.
Whoever explained it that way to you is lying. It sounds like it came from Roy Spencer.
Thanks Joe for your continued schooling.
I’ve argued with those on X over this that’s how I know the difference it forced myself to delve deep into the mechanics: Convection is a consequence of the dry adiabatic lapse rate, not the cause.
The Moon has a radiative lapse rate despite having no atmosphere and no convection. This my go to that supports the lapse rate arises from LTE and molecular thermodynamics in a gravitational field, not from bulk convection.
Exactly. Convection occurs after an energy deposit in order to restore the thermal equilibrium of the lapse rate. The natural state where the atmosphere always wants to settle is the lapse rate; that’s the minimum energy configuration. A heat deposit disrupts that state and if molecular transfer cannot distribute it fast enough then bulk convection via buoyancy will.
They have it precisely backwards…why does climate science keep doing backwards things??? Lol
Why is flux so impossibly hard to comprehend to most non physicists and some that are? I simply don’t know. I took forever to grasp it at a rudimentary level. I think the error is in teaching spectroscopy/radiative transfer and never going further.
X has hidden my posts so much I cannot see my own posts under a comment. I went to alt account and it does the same thing for both accounts. Nobody sees them.
Fuckers. Mine too.
Mass reporting I think? Just after some wanker used Grok to discredit me because they lost the physics debate. Literally, Grok discredited me by name and X claimed that was not a breach of TOS and “soft locked” out my account.
@CDM I get this sort of thing constantly. They lose the debate and resort to ridiculous accusations. Just the other day, someone purporting to be a physicist referred to a Skeptical Science publication which supposedly debunked Joe’s proof of GHG theory being nonsense. In that publication was a reference to a diagram used by Harvard and reproduced by Joe to show how the slab model fails. Skeptical Science attributed the diagram to Joe and pointed out the same flaw that Joe had identified. When i pointed this out the response was that they would come looking for me if I kept on with my denier claptrap!
I’ve been banned from X , too , CDM. Apparently my account “is suspended”
I “broke the rules”. Actually, I’m quite content about that, because the AGW loons are aggravation and a waste of time
I’ve got a link to my profile…I don’t know whether it will come out or not..
https://x.com/Mack82194727091
Could be some fun reading.
Hi Joe, hope you are keeping well.
Potholer was on the Tom Nelson Podcast a year ago.
They’re so confident but they won’t have a friendly professional discussion with me…
And the times you have you’ve been too nice in my opinion, correct them immediately with the physics and shut them down when they lie or say something incorrect. Tom could have shut him up by understanding the proxy data mismatch which is the lie that produced and reproduced the hockey stick, and by pointing out Mann even said that in his technical files that the high resolution current data and the low resolution historical data were incompatible. This was omitted by every social network that ran with the hockey stick and the “unprecedented” warming slogan. And yes, Mann never corrected them.
@Joe about 30 years ago I attended a lecture given by Sergei Prokofiev (grandson of the composer) where he outlined the history of Russia from 1000AD to present day. From the time of Peter the Great in about mid 1700s it was governed by English freemasons in order to create an experiment in socialism to see if the populace could swallow it. That was a model which is now being pushed via its antithesis. The Trump admin is nothing but a veiled invitation for an extreme left wing global takeover which will be welcomed with open arms. Meanwhile global temperature is going to fall while we are going to be prepared for the opposite.
These retards think that they’re masters of the mind and social structure and that it’s all blank slate. They literally tried mating humans with chimps and raising chimps as humans. These people are so far gone it’s them who have no minds…all their free masonic magic rituals have left them void of reason and common sense and for this they believe themselves to be geniuses. They’re in fact just psychopaths, perverts, freaks, and degenerates, with money.
@Joe zombie apocalypse is happening!
Single female voting rights seem quite problematic
Joe, that is a misapplication of the first law of thermodynamics.
The first law is fundamentally conservation of energy. In a closed system, the energy can be changed by adding heat or doing work:
dU = Q – p dV
But you are using this equation to compare different portions of the atmosphere against each other. That’s not valid. The first law is about energy change of one system during some process, not about comparing different systems against each other.
The way it can be used is if you assume a parcel of fluid is moving around in the atmosphere — then you can talk about how its energy changes. But that is convection.
So the equation you used is physically valid, but only if you are looking at an atmosphere where convection happens.
Nepal, ANY statement of the First Law in its mathematical form, and any valid mathematical operation on it such as differentiation, which only assumes that the state change is continuous – and it is, since we assume that for all of reality and all of physics – is valid.
The different horizontal slices of the atmosphere are not different disconnected systems.
Convection begins at the molecular scale; when the heat deposit is small, diffusion can take care of it; when the heat deposit is large, you get a full bubbling up and mass exchange because diffusion is too slow.
The lapse rate originates at the molecular scale and is or would be seen in an isolation metal pipe of air. If we heated the bottom of the pipe slowly, molecular diffusion might take care of the heat transfer; if we heated the bottom of the pipe rapidly and to great temperature, we would get mass convection inside the pipe as the less dense more buoyant air parcel forced the gas above to get out of its way in bulk.
I don’t know where you’re getting these ideas from Nepal, but they’re violating the basic principles of how we do physics re: differentiation and assuming 1st order continuity in changes, etc.
The first law is always expressed as a differential, but it’s valid inside of a boundary yeah? Energy is by definition the quantity that is conserved over time. So inside some system, energy can only change if it crosses the boundary as heat or work. Otherwise, it cannot change over time.
I don’t see any justification for you to use the first law to compare two different points in space. There is no physical law that says how energy is distributed in space, the only law is how it is distributed in time. Specifically that it is constant in time.
Nepal, we can do whatever rearranging we want with mathematically defined laws. Newton took his law of gravitation, applied calculus to it and found that it popped out Kepler’s Laws.
U = mCpT + mgh + c = total internal energy of a gas parcel. Well, since gas is amorphous, let’s take the differential so that we can get infinitesimal locations.
dU = mCp*dT + mg*dh;
If the infinitesimal energy dU is not changing, which is what happens in thermal equilibrium, then dU = 0, m’s cancel, and dT/dh = -g/Cp.
There is exactly zero mathematical nor physical nor interpretational problem with this.
This just accidentally arrives at the empirically measured value for dry air? And continues to work when applying water vapour latent heat under the same derivation for wet air? That’s highly unlikely that anything has been done incorrectly.
It is interesting though that this is what the greenhouse effect believers are now resorting to – the existence of the adiabatic lapse rate and the fact that it can be derived from basic physics is entirely sufficient to destroy their entire pseudoscience, so now they’re just denying that the math is real and that we’re allowed to derive it? lol
Thank you that clarifies all the assumptions beautifully. The assumption I think is wrong is here:
“If the infinitesimal energy dU is not changing, which is what happens in thermal equilibrium, then dU = 0”
Thermal equilibrium does not mean the internal energy is constant everywhere. For example if I have two bricks on top of each other at equilibrium, the top one will have more energy because it is higher.
The reason the dU = 0 assumption gives the right answer is because it mimics what happens in convection, a fluid parcel moves without exchanging energy (or heat really)
So we don’t lose the forest for the trees: we agree that the lapse rate does not require the greenhouse effect. But I think it does require convection.
You keep trying to insert something which is not present in the foundation. Convection is not present in the foundation. There is thermal motion at the molecular scale present at the foundation, and this can be considered “micro convection” if you really need to use that word somewhere, but the microscopic thermal motion is sufficient for vertical energy distribution.
The potential energy being higher with height from your brick is also present in the mgh term of the equation above for air. This is specifically what leads to the distribution in temperature, because kinetic thermal energy exchanges for gravitational potential energy when the molecules experience vertical motions, which of course they always are due to random thermal motion and the Maxwellian speed distribution.