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