The Flow Principle · The model
Flow Studies
Where parts answer each other, order emerges – and every order becomes a part of the next.
Seven states, seven transitions, one frame. A model of how something comes into being – a project, an idea, an organism – and climbs one level with every round.
The model is not derived from research. It arose from my own abduction and deduction. The sources came afterwards and refer to similar research, not to the model.
Status marks throughout the model:supportedholds as formthesis– live from the test bench below.
The spiral
Drag to rotate. The axis is time: each turn rests on the level below. The spiral is open downwards and upwards; above it stands the apeiron: space, time, energy, matter.
0Quanta1Chemistry2Life3Nervous system4Consciousness & culture5Symbiosis: human & technology6Planet (thesis)Between the levelsBridgeToday?BeatTime · outsideApeiron
supportedholds as formthesis– live from the test bench
The levels
What if existence is not a collection of things, but a continuous transformation of relationships? Seven states follow one another, linked by seven transitions, on every scale, held together by Cycles: not a step, but the frame that closes the circle and opens the next one, a level higher, like midnight. In the universe there is no outside; its outside is time, and seen from inside, forward is the outside. The model holds wherever parts can answer each other – in a project, an organism, a society – and anew on every level: what emerges on one level is a part, and the spark, of the next.
The model does not apply everywhere alike but anew on each level, with different parts. At the bottom, on level 0, the quanta: a particle appears as a point when measured in the moment, and as a pattern when watched over time. Chemistry pulses and forms patterns but does not live. Bacteria and plants live without consciousness. Nervous systems produce behaviour no part knows. Consciousness and culture are «more than the sum of its parts» in the strict sense. What is emergence on one level is only a part on the next, and its spark. That turns the circle into a spiral. The model's limit lies not between alive and dead but between answering and not answering: the tardigrade can answer, it just is not doing so right now. Corinna's thesis: today we stand at the start of a fifth turn, in which consciousness and culture couple with technology, right in the transition resonance, where a beat becomes a form. A sixth turn, the planet as an answering system, is drawn dashed. The spiral is open in both directions: quantum physics is not the smallest and the universe is not the largest. Above it stands the apeiron, after Anaximander the boundless: space, time, energy and matter as one thing in four states, switched by temperature (thesis). The axis of the spiral is time, drawn as space: each turn rests on the level below. As a whole the spiral exists at once, physics' block universe; from inside, at the point «Today», forward is the outside. Both are true, from different places. What holds the direction is entropy.
States and transitions
Readings
Seven states and one frame, with seven transitions between them. Six states draw on an ingredient: space, time or energy. One is what comes out: emergence. Resonance is not a state but the transition that turns beat into pattern and parts into a whole. The frame, cycles, runs on time; at emergence a small cycle also circles until interference comes. The examples show them all at work.
01Spark
ENERGY
Is something being set in motion? A first impulse that starts the change, like virtual particles flickering out of empty space.
→Repetition
TRANSITION
A single spark fades. Only when it returns does a beat form. For example: a heartbeat, a chorus, a ritual.
02Pulse
TIME
Does it return? A beat in time: heartbeat, breath, the daily rhythm. Without return, a spark just fades.
→Resonance
TRANSITION
A beat in time becomes an order in space. Ernst Chladni (1787) sprinkled sand on a metal plate and bowed it: the tone becomes a figure. This is the first resonance in the model. For example: sand figures on the plate. A groove that becomes the shape of a song.
03Pattern
SPACE
Does the beat become an order in space? Like the cosmic web, where galaxies line up in threads that look almost exactly like a slime mould network.
→Attraction
TRANSITION
Where a pattern repeats, mass gathers. Density attracts more density, and an imbalance appears: tension. For example: galaxies gather along the threads of the cosmic web. People move to the city because people are already there.
04Tension
SPACE
Does the pattern gather weight? Contrast, imbalance, density pulling at density. Stored energy before the tipping point.
→Release
TRANSITION
Tension builds until one small cause is enough and everything lets go at once. Per Bak called this self-organised criticality. What comes free flows: motion. For example: the one grain of sand that sets off the avalanche. The plot point in a film.
05Motion
TIME
Has the tension let go? Flow, direction, the avalanche, the next step.
→Integration
TRANSITION
What is moving meets something else that swings. The rhythms fall into step (Kuramoto), and the parts are taken into a whole without losing themselves. This is the second resonance, one level up. For example: metronomes on a board beating in sync. A band that sounds like one person.
06Emergence
RESULT
Does the whole become more than its parts?
Circling
SMALL CYCLE
What has emerged runs in rounds: it repeats until interference comes. Two cycles nested – the small one of the running system, the large one of the spiral. For example: a magazine issue after issue, a heart beat after beat.
→Saturation
TRANSITION
What has emerged grows rich, connected and eventually too smooth. Holling calls this phase conservation: resilience drops, and a small disturbance is enough. For example: a company that owns its market and misses the new. A forest without fire where nothing young grows.
07Interference
ENERGY
Does something disturb what is already running? Noise and friction that knock the system out of step and keep it alive.
→Reorganisation
TRANSITION
The disturbance breaks something open, and in the gap everything rearranges. Here Cycles close the circle, like midnight, and a new spark becomes possible, one level higher. For example: after a forest fire the first seeds sprout. After the crisis comes the new idea.
∞Cycles
TIME
The frame around all seven: does it close the circle and open a next state?
What the model predicts
A model only has value once it claims something that could be refuted. These two predictions follow from the model's laws, not from observation. They are dated (7 November 2026) and will be tested; the result will be published, whatever it is.
1 · The return channel. Systems in which attraction runs without a return channel – requests land at one point and do not go back as a question or an open slot – reach saturation faster than systems with a return channel, under the same load. The return channel is measured at the start, saturation (lead time, open decisions, exhaustion) after ten weeks. What the model rules out: that more capacity with the same return channel delays saturation for good – it only shifts it. If the opposite shows, the model is wrong here.
2 · The same curve on every level. If the order of the transitions is universal, systems on different levels must behave alike at the same point: the distribution of saturation events – how often small and how often large collapses occur – follows the same form in teams, markets, ecosystems and star clusters, a power law with a similar exponent. For earthquakes, avalanches, wildfires, company failures and wars this is measured individually (Bak 1996, Clauset et al. 2009); the model names the common reason: the same point in the same sequence, saturation without a return channel. From this follows the actual prediction: where the return channel is opened, the exponent shifts – on every level in the same direction. Testable with data that already exist: forests with and without controlled burns, markets with and without regulation, teams with and without ping-pong.
The first prediction is measured with teams from November 2026 (tool «Return-channel measurement», in progress); the second against published data. The register and the test bench record what holds and what does not.
Sources
The model arose from my own abduction and deduction; these works were drawn on afterwards because they describe single states and transitions. They are not its origin.
Terms and readings
Laws, roles and readings that grew out of the model. Each mark shows its status; the question mark opens the note with sources.
Time in the religionsSparkBlack holeLawsSmall cycle ↻Speed of releaseLowest levelConstellationBurnoutAyurvedaFlickerResponsiveness
Examples · where the sequence runs
Where does the sequence run? 250 systems from physics to the planet, each as a reading: which part is the spark, the pulse, the pattern … The evidence status says whether data exists that could test it – 170 with data, 55 described in the literature, 25 parallels.
The sequence in short · click a state or a transition
250 examples
Findings, hypotheses, theses
Breadcrumbs for possibilities: ideas that think further on purpose, so that others can try to prove or refute them. The frame is logic, not numbers. For each thesis: similar work from research, how close it is, and whether anything has been measured.
◌ thought · ○ shows in the model · ● measured · ✕ refuted (stays listed). Close = same statement or structure; related = same direction, different reasoning; loose = same form, different mechanism. Classification by Claude, Corinna Kost's AI collaborator.
Findings · 3
Supported and tested on several levels. Here the scan looks for new examples.
| Thesis | Similar work · closeness | In the model | |
|---|---|---|---|
| ● | ✦11. Time depends on matter; every system has its own beat. | Chou et al. (time dilation over 33 cm) 2010 · closeHolling (time scales, panarchy) 2001 · related | Beat in the Flow Model |
| ● | ✦14. Matter is fixed – it only rearranges. | Noether (conservation laws) 1918 · close | Universe without scattering in |
| ● | ✦17. In expanding space energy is not conserved – so one may add it. | Noether; redshift of light 1918 · close | Universe: «add energy», «tap energy» |
Hypotheses · 20
Testable, but not tested enough yet – in the model, in the universe or on the test bench. Here the scan looks for studies and data.
| Thesis | Similar work · closeness | In the model | |
|---|---|---|---|
| ○ | ✦2. Beneath everything lies a single rule: a spark is a flicker that a condition amplifies. | Sugiyama et al. (traffic jam from nothing) 2008 · closeHeisenberg 1927 · loose | Spark conditions; universe: without the initial flicker nothing forms |
| ○ | ✦6. A network is a constellation with its traces in time. | World lines (Minkowski) 1908 · closeBurchett et al. (Physarum maps the cosmic web) 2020 · relatedWheeler/Feynman (one electron) 1965 · related | Universe: «Stars only · Traces in time»; slime network: «Traces» |
| ○ | ✦7. Spacetime and fur grow by the same principle: bundled traces. | Turing; Sick et al. (follicle patterns) 1952/2006 · loose | Universe: long trace |
| ○ | ✦9. Graininess depends on time: one moment is grainy, many moments are smooth. | Long exposure, sampling – · close | Universe: «Trace: 1 moment … long» |
| ◌ | ✦12. A black hole has no single centre; it lives in the gathered matter. | Hoop conjecture (Thorne) 1972 · relatedFuzzballs (Mathur) 2005 · relatedEmergent gravity (Verlinde) 2011 · related | Universe: switch «◌ hole from the crowd» |
| ○ | ✦13. An echo is the beat of something that was before or lies on another level. | Baryon acoustic oscillations (Eisenstein et al.) 2005 · close | Universe: space «Echo» |
| ○ | ✦15. A network needs no food; it arises from attraction alone. | Zel'dovich 1970 · closeBond, Kofman & Pogosyan (cosmic web) 1996 · close | Universe: slider «matter relative to space» |
| ◌ | ✦16. A black hole swallows not matter but time. | Time dilation at the horizon (Oppenheimer & Snyder) 1939 · relatedHawking radiation 1975 · loose | Universe: switch «◌ hole swallows time» |
| ○ | ✦19. One thing shows itself in two states – depending on whether time is seen along: as points or as a network. | Bohr (complementarity) 1928 · relatedTonomura et al. (double slit, one electron at a time) 1989 · related | Universe: «Stars only · Traces in time» |
| ○ | ✦21. Space is the now between past and future. | Block universe (Minkowski; Einstein) 1908 · closeWeyl 1949 · closeGrowing block (Broad) 1923 · related | Universe: spacetime with «now in the block» |
| ○ | ✦22. Compressed spacetime looks like stone because stone is compressed time. | Steno (stratigraphy) 1669 · close | Universe: spacetime, «now in the block» |
| ○ | ✦26. The sine wave is a spiral seen from the side: solar system and quantum particle show the same behaviour. | Euler (phase e^iωt) 1748 · closeWorld line of an orbit as a helix (Minkowski) 1908 · close | Spiral of the Flow Model |
| ◌ | ✦31. Energy turns into space; dark energy is energy that has become space. | Tryon (zero total energy) 1973 · relatedDark energy with constant density (Riess et al.) 1998 · loose | Universe: push (dark energy) |
| ◌ | ✦38. Something is beautiful when it follows the principles of the Flow Model: what we recognise as alive, and what the universe perhaps knows as coherent or resonant. Or put this way: the model finds things beautiful by recognising itself. | Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order (living structure) 2002 · closeBirkhoff (aesthetic measure: order / complexity) 1933 · relatedSchmidhuber (beauty as compression) 1997 · relatedReber, Schwarz & Winkielman (processing fluency) 2004 · relatedTaylor (fractals in nature and art) 2011 · relatedBerlyne (inverted U: neither too simple nor too complex) 1971 · related | States: pattern with interference, movement, the same curve on every level · experiment: /universe?versuch=schoen |
| ○ | ✦39. Release is a single movement at different speeds: collision is the fast release, orbit the slow one, with a different balance between attraction and repulsion. Both wear themselves out and end in standstill. | Hulse & Taylor (binary pulsar loses energy through gravitational waves) 1975 · closeTidal braking of Earth and Moon (Darwin) 1880 · relatedCorinna, ChatGPT «My Mind»: four forms of the solution 2025 · close | Transition release (tension → movement), with speed |
| ○ | ✦40. Whether a release becomes emergence depends on its speed: if it is slower than the time the parts need to answer each other, and the free energy is carried away, the parts stay bound and a new system forms. If it is faster, it falls apart and goes back to the spark. | Kuramoto (coupling against the spread of rhythms) 1975 · closeSafronov (planets from gentle collisions) 1969 · relatedPrigogine (dissipative structures) 1977 · related | Release → integration or back to the spark · experiment in the universe: turn up the speed |
| ○ | ✦41. Emergence needs a window of energy density: too hot and everything falls apart, too cold and nothing moves. The window is a ratio of energy, time, matter and space, and it moves as space grows. We live inside it: fluid enough for movement, cool enough for binding. | Recombination: atoms only after about 380,000 years (Peebles) 1968 · closePhase transitions (Landau) 1937 · relatedBolognese: it binds as it cools (flow model, 7 Nov.) 2026 · loose | Apeiron (temperature, ice · water · steam) |
| ○ | ✦44. Stones are traces of their release: the same lava becomes glass (obsidian) when cooled fast, granite with large crystals when cooled slowly; limestone reorders into marble under heat and pressure. Every structure carries the trace of the speed and temperature it formed with – like the compressed spacetime in the test universe that looked like marble. | Kirkpatrick (crystal growth from the melt) 1975 · closePetrone et al. (brain turned to glass in Herculaneum) 2020 · closeBucher & Grapes (metamorphism) 2011 · related | Transition release with speed · universe: spacetime block, traces in time · theses 7, 39–41 |
| ○ | ✦46. The larger shapes the smaller only within what the material allows: hands give clay its form, the clay answers with its own rules. Not a plan from above but conditions (Holling's memory, downward causation); the parts build from below, the whole constrains from above. A person forms the same way: first fluid, then slowly solid – a life as slow cooling, learning keeps it warm. Religions know both images: the potter who forms from earth, and the so-of-itself. | Waddington (epigenetic landscape) 1957 · closeGunderson & Holling (panarchy: remember) 2002 · closeCampbell (downward causation) 1974 · relatedPotter images: Genesis 2:7 (Adam from adamah, the soil) · Jeremiah 18 · Quran 55:14 · Khnum · Nüwa · looseSo of itself: Daodejing 25 and 42 (ziran) · dependent origination (Buddhism) · Rigveda 10.129 (Nasadiya) · relatedWhitehead, process theology (lures rather than commands) 1929 · related | Beat from the level below / plate · note «Time in the religions» |
| ○ | ✦65. Yes and no are contagious: some infect with yes, the others with no. Pressure and counter-pressure; different ratios make one or the other prevail for a while. | Saper et al. (flip-flop switch of sleep) 2001 · closeBorbély (two-process model of sleep) 1982 · closeVyazovskiy et al. (local sleep in the awake brain) 2011 · related | Flow model · attraction and repulsion · experiment «Sleep pressure: yes and no» (ember world) |
Theses · 50
Interpretations that cannot be measured directly. They stay honestly marked as theses; the scan looks for parallels.
| Thesis | Similar work · closeness | In the model | |
|---|---|---|---|
| ◌ | ✦1. Spacetime is a membrane from which particles of another level emerge. | Randall & Sundrum 1999 · relatedCasimir effect (Lamoreaux) 1997 · loose | Note «Flicker» on the spiral |
| ◌ | ✦3. Chance is the movement of a level we cannot read. | Bohm (hidden variables) 1952 · relatedLorenz (deterministic chaos) 1963 · related | Reading in the Flow Model |
| ◌ | ✦4. Time does not only run forward; it arises from relations. | Page & Wootters 1983 · relatedRovelli, The Order of Time 2018 · related | Notes «Time» and «Time in the religions» |
| ◌ | ✦5. There is only a now; space is a rendering of time. | Hermann Weyl 1949 · closeVan Raamsdonk (space from entanglement) 2010 · relatedHolographic principle ('t Hooft, Susskind) 1993 · loose | Universe: plane = now, spacetime behind |
| ◌ | ✦8. We see time although we look at space – hence the fascination with fur, marble and animation. | Wertheimer (phi phenomenon) 1912 · loose | Sentence in the universe at «Traces in time» |
| ◌ | ✦10. Space fades in time like an afterimage. | Afterimage (retina), Ebbinghaus 1885 · loose | Traces fade each step |
| ◌ | ✦18. Space and time swap roles, the way energy and matter turn into each other. | Schwarzschild interior (r becomes timelike) 1916 · relatedEinstein, E = mc² 1905 · related | not built yet |
| ◌ | ✦20. Measuring is asking: the instrument poses a yes-no question, and the particle answers as wave or as point. | Wheeler, «It from bit» 1989 · closeRovelli, relational quantum mechanics 1996 · relatedZurek, decoherence 2003 · related | not built yet |
| ◌ | ✦23. Small structures repeat the large ones – every stone could once have been a universe. | Mandelbrot (self-similarity) 1982 · relatedVazza & Feletti (brain and cosmic web) 2020 · related | Test bench: universal |
| ◌ | ✦24. Every level has its own ratio of space and time; it is the same physics, only much smaller. In a stone universe a proton would be the size of a solar system. | Rutherford/Bohr (atom as solar system, now discarded) 1911/1913 · relatedPlanck length as the limit of current theories 1899 · loose | Solar system in the universe |
| ◌ | ✦25. A solar system, measured like a quantum particle, answers as a point in the moment or as a pattern over time. | Tonomura et al. (double slit) 1989 · related | Solar system: traces in time |
| ◌ | ✦27. Time is also matter and energy. | Einstein (field equations) 1915 · relatedWheeler (mass without mass) 1962 · relatedLIGO (gravitational waves carry energy) 2016 · related | Spiral: Apeiron |
| ◌ | ✦28. Space, time, energy and matter are one thing in four states – the apeiron. The switch is temperature. | Anaximander (Apeiron) c. 550 BC · relatedPhase transitions in the early universe (Kibble) 1976 · related | Spiral top: Apeiron; universe: temperature |
| ◌ | ✦29. The universe never reaches absolute zero; it heats itself at its own horizon. | Gibbons & Hawking 1977 · close | not built yet |
| ◌ | ✦30. The apeiron stays the same amount; the cold end passes into the initial state. | Penrose (conformal cyclic cosmology) 2010 · relatedCurrent physics: no global energy conservation in expanding space – · loose | not built yet |
| ◌ | ✦32. The flicker of space is counted many times over – which is why the prediction of the energy of space is off by a factor of 10¹²⁰. | Cohen, Kaplan & Nelson (holographic dark energy) 1999 · close | Test bench: spark · cosmos |
| ◌ | ✦33. What cancels the flicker is a change of state of energy, not a disappearance. | Amendola (coupled dark energy) 2000 · related | not built yet |
| ◌ | ✦34. Space is not a container but the same thing as matter, energy and time in another state. | Van Raamsdonk (space from entanglement) 2010 · relatedMaldacena & Susskind (ER = EPR) 2013 · relatedLe Sage (gravity as pressure) 1748 · loose | Spiral: Apeiron |
| ◌ | ✦35. The spiral is open downward and upward: quanta are not the smallest, the universe is not the largest. | Anaximander (the boundless) c. 550 BC · related | Spiral: level 0 quanta, open ends |
| ◌ | ✦36. Every state of the apeiron has two poles, bound and potential: time as past (bound) and future (potential), energy as bound and free. Bound behaves like attraction, potential like repulsion. | Entropy and the direction of time (Boltzmann) 1877 · relatedFree and bound energy (Helmholtz) 1882 · relatedGrowing block (Broad) 1923 · loose | Apeiron: second layer of controls (planned) |
| ◌ | ✦37. A couple relationship is entanglement on another level: the same person is potential when single and bound when taken, and the partner need not be nearby. | Bell, «Bertlmann's socks» (classical correlation) 1981 · looseRovelli, relational quantum mechanics 1996 · relatedAspect (entanglement over distance) 1982 · looseBohm (hidden variables, non-local) 1952 · related't Hooft (superdeterminism) 2016 · related | Level 4 · constellation |
| ◌ | ✦42. Energy becomes space, and space is the memory of the universe. In the end almost everything is space and radiation, even and without scale. In standstill nothing resists any more: the smallest flicker becomes interference and ignites anew, one level higher. | Cosmological redshift: light loses energy while space grows (Lemaître) 1927 · closePenrose, conformal cyclic cosmology 2010 · relatedSteinhardt & Turok (branes collide, a new big bang) 2001 · relatedCorinna, ChatGPT «My Mind»: «It's not an end! It's a cycle» 2025 · close | Interference → reorganisation for the whole · Apeiron |
| ◌ | ✦43. At the very bottom there is flicker, still without space or time. Space is how well flicker answers itself; time is the order of the answers; energy is its pace; matter is where it locks into a standing beat. The spiral is a chain of readers: the quanta read the flicker first, and each level reads the one below and can read more. The universe is a code that reads itself, and every reading is an answer. | Wheeler, «It from Bit» 1990 · closeSorkin (causal sets: spacetime from events and their order) 1987 · relatedVan Raamsdonk (space from entanglement) 2010 · relatedRovelli (loop quantum gravity) 2004 · relatedCorinna, ChatGPT «My Mind»: «That's the bit system right?» 2025 · close | Below level 0, open at the bottom · Apeiron · theses 2, 3 and 4 |
| ◌ | ✦45. The pace of the flicker is the one control: depending on speed, the Apeiron shows as energy, matter, space or time. Temperature is the speed at which particles tremble (ice, water, steam); in the brain, frequencies set the state (deep sleep, rest, focus). In the brain as a reading: matter = cells and myelin, energy = sugar, ATP and ion currents, time = rhythms and memory, space = how well cells answer each other (what fires together is near). | Boltzmann (temperature as mean kinetic energy) 1877 · closeHebb (what fires together wires together) 1949 · relatedBuzsáki, Rhythms of the Brain 2006 · related | Extends thesis 43 · Apeiron (temperature) |
| ◌ | ✦47. The spark fixes the scaffold, the window decides how far it develops. Same beginning, same pattern: in the comparison both halves show the same web. How long the window stays open decides how far the pattern matures. «Time becomes matter» keeps the window open longer: the clock runs slower, space grows more slowly, attraction acts more strongly. The identical picture is only an intermediate state: one side stops at today, the other keeps running. | Zel'dovich (pancakes, a scaffold from the initial fluctuations) 1970 · closeBond, Kofman & Pogosyan (cosmic web) 1996 · closeSpringel et al. (Millennium Simulation) 2005 · relatedWaddington (canalisation) 1957 · loose | Universe · comparison, scenarios «Only tempo», «Only attraction», «Different beginning», «Switch on later» |
| ◌ | ✦48. The flicker does not make space, it changes the state of its neighbours. Like dominoes or a contagion: one point flips, infects the next, and they infect their neighbours. No energy is lost: it is parked in every flipped point. Because the rings keep growing, each ring needs more energy than the one before; so the chain gets slower and cooler, but never comes completely to rest. Space is the result of this chain. | Coleman (decay of the false vacuum, bubbles) 1977 · closeGuth (old inflation, bubbles) 1981 · closeSupercooled water: freezing starts from one crystal · relatedRiess et al. / Perlmutter et al. (accelerating expansion) 1998 · relatedKermack & McKendrick (SIR contagion model) 1927 · loose | Universe · experiment «Contagion» (model world, not cosmology) |
| ◌ | ✦49. Nothing moves, everything is rigid. At the start the states are evenly distributed, not all the same. A signal causes changes of state, and the travelling front of these changes is space. Like a smouldering front: wood becomes ember, ember becomes ash; the front travels, the wood stays where it is. | Zuse (calculating space) 1969 · relatedZik, Olami & Moses (fingering of a smouldering front) 1998 · relatedExcitable media (Wiener & Rosenblueth) 1946 · related | Universe · scenario «Local apeiron» |
| ◌ | ✦50. Really everything is evenly distributed; space displaces the matter in between, structure is a trace of space. There can be several sparks. Where matter piles up and holds space back, space breaks through the thinnest skin of matter into less dense regions, and that is where the webs form. Matter lies in webs because it is still on its way to spreading out. | Saffman & Taylor (viscous fingering) 1958 · relatedRayleigh–Taylor fingers in the Crab Nebula · relatedSheth & van de Weygaert (voids merge) 2004 · closeFoam coarsening (Weaire & Hutzler) 1999 · loose | Universe · scenario «Local apeiron, several sparks» (breakthrough still open) |
| ◌ | ✦51. The universe as chemistry: beneath the quanta lies a medium of states. Quanta are stable patterns in it; light is a front that never locks in; mass is the locking in; charge is the direction in which the spiral turns. | Zuse (calculating space) 1969 · close’t Hooft (cellular automaton) 2016 · closeTuring (patterns from reaction and diffusion) 1952 · relatedBelousov–Zhabotinsky reaction (spiral waves) 1951/1964 · related | no model yet (open; idea: state world) |
| ◌ | ✦52. Entanglement as a deeper neighbourhood: with a single spark, entangled particles share an origin, and space only arises between them afterwards. Or entanglement is the contagion in a medium beneath space. Caution: according to Bell, a shared origin alone is not enough. | Maldacena & Susskind (ER = EPR) 2013 · closeVan Raamsdonk (space from entanglement) 2010 · closeBell (a limit for local explanations) 1964 · close | no model yet (open) |
| ◌ | ✦53. More than the sum arises from the difference that comes together. Two eyes see depth that neither has alone. Resonance brings the parts together, the difference makes the depth. On every level: entanglement, molecule, two parents, two eyes and ears, conversation, lichen, Earth-sized telescope. | Wheatstone (stereo vision) 1838 · closeJulesz (random-dot stereograms) 1971 · closeSchrödinger (entanglement) 1935 · relatedBateson («a difference which makes a difference») 1979 · related | Spiral · Emergence · «Two eyes» per level |
| ◌ | ✦54. Ember: the wood as a whole is matter, the carrier that does not move. Unburnt wood is time (future), the ember is energy (the now), the ash is space (what is left lying). Time is matter that has not yet become space; at the front it becomes energy. Ash becomes soil, from which a tree grows with sunlight and stores time again. We carry some time within us until we die. | Ellis (crystallising block universe) 2014 · relatedNoether (energy and time) 1918 · looseHeraclitus (fire as the first principle) · looseLavoisier (respiration as slow combustion) 1777 · relatedDrossel & Schwabl (forest-fire model) 1992 · related | Universe · experiment «Ember world» (model world) |
| ◌ | ✦55. Tipping point: a spark is not always enough. It ignites only if it produces more than it loses to the surroundings. The counter-force is the inertia of mass (the more firmly locked in, the harder to switch) or repulsion. The tipping point is the ratio of spark to counter-force. | Jeans criterion 1902 · closeArrhenius (activation energy) 1889 · relatedNucleation (critical nucleus) · relatedKermack & McKendrick (R0 > 1) 1927 · related | Ember world · «Spark too weak», «Heavy wood», «Repulsion» |
| ◌ | ✦56. Self-ignition: the spark can arise inside the system. When a region becomes large and dense enough, heat can no longer escape from the middle and the counter-force loses. Free radicals show the same chain in chemistry: initiation, propagation, termination. | Semenov (thermal explosion) 1928 · closeFrank-Kamenetskii (critical size) 1939 · closeFree radicals (chain reaction) · relatedSugiyama et al. (traffic jam from nothing) 2008 · related | Ember world · «Small pile» / «Large pile» (limit in the model: radius about 27) |
| ◌ | ✦57. The spark is what does not cancel out. A perfectly balanced field stays still; only an imbalance sets something going. At the Big Bang about one particle in a billion was left without a partner, and everything is made of these. | Sakharov (conditions for the excess of matter) 1967 · relatedBaryon asymmetry · relatedGHZ state (entanglement of three or more) 1989 · loose | no model yet (open) |
| ◌ | ✦58. Observers are neighbours: reality arises from relation. An observer is anything that answers and keeps a trace. What has spread far enough becomes real for everyone. A role is not a property of the person but of the relation and the viewpoint. | Rovelli (relational quantum mechanics) 1996 · closeZurek (quantum Darwinism) 2009 · closeWheeler (participatory universe) 1983 · relatedBuber (I and Thou) 1923 · loose | Firmament · constellations (note «Constellation») |
| ◌ | ✦59. Entanglement as ember: the transitions are the life of an entanglement. It spreads as a front and saturates behind it; saturation is what spreads, like a contagion. Unconnected is time, the front is energy, saturated is space. | Calabrese & Cardy (entanglement as a front) 2005 · closeCheneau et al. (measured, Nature) 2012 · closeCoffman, Kundu & Wootters (monogamy) 2000 · closePan, Zeilinger et al. (entanglement swapping) 1998 · relatedVan Raamsdonk (space from entanglement) 2010 · related | Flow model · note «Transitions as entanglement» |
| ◌ | ✦60. Consciousness in cycles: perhaps consciousness assembles itself anew each time one wakes up. It has its own cycles and a memory of the larger whole; one observes it in oneself, like an observer. | Balkin et al. (waking up: brainstem and thalamus first, then the frontal lobe) 2002 · closeTononi & Cirelli (sleep resets the synapses) 2014 · closeFriedman et al. (neural inertia between waking and unconsciousness) 2010 · relatedKleitman (90-minute cycle, also while awake) 1982 · related | Flow model · frame «Cycles» · experiment «Falling asleep and waking up» in the ember world |
| ◌ | ✦61. Depth is time: depth arises from the difference between two views (two eyes, entanglement). Perhaps this depth is time. | Rogers & Graham (motion parallax: one eye, two moments, depth) 1979 · closePage & Wootters (time from entanglement) 1983 · closeMoreva et al. (time from entanglement, in the lab) 2014 · closeHusserl (inner time-consciousness: the now holds the just-past) 1928 · related | Flow model · note «Two eyes» (thesis 53) |
| ◌ | ✦62. Two beats in one's own body: while thinking, the foot draws small circles in time with the breath, in whole numbers (4 per breath). After looking, there were 8: observing changes the beat. | Bramble & Carrier (breath and stride couple in whole numbers) 1983 · closeArnold tongues (frequency locking in simple ratios) 1965 · related | Flow model · pulse and resonance · star «Cycles circling within each other» |
| ◌ | ✦63. Places where order fades: at Basel station nothing flows any more, people walk into each other's way, and it is getting worse. It looks like the test universe when its order is disturbed. The phone is not the reason, hardly anyone looks at one: people walk rigidly straight ahead without attention, do not see each other, do not give way and move haltingly («zombies», Corinna 9 Nov). | Murakami et al. (distracted pedestrians break up the lanes) 2021 · closeHelbing, Farkas & Vicsek (freezing by heating) 2000 · closeMuramatsu, Irie & Nagatani (jamming in counterflow above a critical density) 1999 · related | Flow model · resonance and interference (order needs anticipation) · computed in the balance view (9 Nov): the tipping point depends on the crowd; at rush hour about one person in seven walking rigidly straight ahead is enough |
| ◌ | ✦64. Observation is time: derived from the third eye, which only sees light and dark, that is, the day. Perhaps observation is time. | Page & Wootters (time only for the observer inside the system) 1983 · closeConnes & Rovelli (thermal time) 1994 · related | Flow model · theses 58 (observer) and 61 (depth is time) |
| ◌ | ✦66. Everything wants to spread out, space too. The great whole would then be a system that has put these forces to use in order to build. | Schrödinger, «What Is Life?» (order from the gradient) 1944 · relatedPrigogine (dissipative structures, Nobel Prize in Chemistry) 1977 · closeSchneider & Kay (life breaks down gradients, as an expression of the second law) 1994 · closeBejan (constructal law: flow systems shape themselves so that flowing gets easier) 1996 · close | Flow model · balance (spreading against holding) · experiment «Everything wants to spread out» |
| ◌ | ✦67. It almost looks as if things have developed mechanisms over time to hold on, so that they are not displaced, for example like little hooks. | Abedin & King (cadherins: adhesion proteins already in single-celled organisms, used there to attach and to catch prey, later the glue of multicellular life) 2008 · closeWaite (byssus threads: how mussels hold on against the surf) 2017 · relatedde Mestral (hook-and-loop fastener modelled on the burdock's hooks) 1955 · relatedZoochory (seeds hook into fur to be spread: holding on in the service of spreading) – · loose | Counterpart to thesis 66 · experiment «Everything wants to spread out»: slider «Sticking» · balance (holding against spreading) |
| ◌ | ✦68. Level switching: Perhaps focus does not only move from one thing to another, but from the larger to the smaller. Moving back and forth between the levels is the hard part: you have to dive in again and find the topic there that you want to work on. | Luna-Rodriguez, Wendt, Kerner auch Koerner, Gawrilow & Jacobsen (38 adults with ADHD, 39 without: slower only when the task switch also switches the level, global versus local) 2018 · closeNavon (forest before trees: we see the whole first, then the parts) 1977 · relatedKalanthroff, Naparstek & Henik (adults with ADHD without precedence of the whole: both levels equally loud; an alerting cue restores the precedence) 2013 · relatedHupfeld, Abagis & Shah (hyperfocus: staying in is easy, switching is hard) 2019 · loose | Tool Focus switch: surface (see everything) → dive in (choose the thing, find the topic there) · levels of the spiral |
| ◌ | ✦69. The law of one's own system: Perhaps hardly anyone deals with the principle, and yet it makes sense to everyone, because it is simply the law of their own system. | Lorenz (Kant's a priori as adaptation: forms of thought fit the world because they arose in it) 1941 · closeLakoff & Johnson (we understand the abstract through our own body) 1999 · relatedWigner (why mathematics fits nature so well) 1960 · looseCrompton et al. (people who think alike pass on information with less loss) 2020 · loose | Testable: explain the principle to several people and count how many examples they assign the same way (coding agreement) |
| ◌ | ✦70. Herding: order through a returning beat. A sheepdog holds the flock together while only running back and forth. Time leaves a trace: the sheep do not break out at once. The trace fades and the flock drifts apart until the dog comes by again. Probably the same mechanism works everywhere: matter wants to spread, time leaves a trace, a beat refreshes it. Order holds as long as the beat returns faster than the trace fades. | Strömbom et al. (sheepdog: collect when scattered, drive when together, zigzagging behind the flock) 2014 · closeGinelli et al. (sheep flocks: slow spreading and sudden packing, in turns) 2015 · closeGoldreich & Tremaine (shepherd moons hold narrow planetary rings together) 1979 · relatedMongillo, Barak & Tsodyks (working memory: short bursts refresh a fading synaptic trace) 2008 · related | Flow model · pulse and cycles (the beat), tension (push and counter-push), thesis 66 (everything wants to spread) · condition: return time shorter than the fading time of the trace · counterpart to 72: the beat needs room · testable in the universe: a nudge returning at a fixed beat versus the time a structure takes to dissolve |
| ◌ | ✦71. Synaesthesia as translation between states: the apeiron can take different states. Colour can also take the state of space, or sounds the state of colour. Synaesthesia would then be a wrong reading of a state, a translation error. But that means all these words are already contained in the vocabulary and are only read differently. | Ward, Huckstep & Tsakanikos (sound–colour synaesthesia follows mappings everyone shares: high tone, light colour) 2006 · closeSpence (crossmodal correspondences: pitch, brightness, size and shape go together for everyone) 2011 · closeBouba/kiki effect (Köhler 1929; Ramachandran & Hubbard 2001) 2001 · related | Flow model · states and transitions (matter, energy, space, time as states of one apeiron) · model: case «synaesthesia» under neurodiversity · testable: compare mappings with and without synaesthesia; the model expects the same direction, only stronger |
| ◌ | ✦72. Distance enables response: water makes distance possible in the first place, and with it communication. If the distance is too short, no communication can take place; everything lies fallow, static like stone. When everything lies close together, it is as if spacetime were folded into itself as in aliasing: it looks like stone, and the traces can no longer be followed. | Liu & Nagel (jamming: above a critical density, what flows turns rigid) 1998 · closeHelbing, Farkas & Vicsek (freezing by heating in counterflow) 2000 · relatedNyquist & Shannon (aliasing: patterns that lie too close together are misread) 1949 · relatedHall (proxemics: distance determines which communication is possible) 1966 · loose | Flow model · thesis 66 (everything wants to spread) and responsiveness · test case Basel (too dense and rigid, the flow stalls) · counterpart to 70 · testable: raise density in the simulation and measure exchange between neighbours; expected: hardly any loss at first, then a tipping point |
| ◌ | ✦73. Unintended is not random: much of what looks random is not; there was simply no intention behind it. What arises without intention follows the conditions. The more intention, the more energy is spent; the less, the less. Like a stack of cards laid with the minimum: the cards lie on top of each other, are recognisable as a stack and do not fall. | Ferguson (the result of human action, but not of human design) 1767 · closeTodorov & Jordan (minimal intervention: only what disturbs the goal is corrected, the rest may scatter) 2002 · closeSimon (satisficing: good enough instead of optimal) 1956 · closeKool, McGuire, Rosen & Botvinick (people avoid mental effort where they can) 2010 · relatedBak, Tang & Wiesenfeld (sandpile: the shape settles from the conditions, without a plan) 1987 · relatedLandauer (fixing a piece of information costs a minimum of energy; measured by Bérut et al. in 2012) 1961 · loose | Flow model · complements 3 (chance as a level we cannot read) · balance: intention is energy on the holding side (66, 67), the minimum just holds against spreading · testable: lay a stack of cards several times with the minimum and photograph it, measure each card's rotation and offset; expected: rotation scatters widely (nobody steers it), the offset stays small and within the tipping limit (what is meant to hold) |
Test bench · register × research
Which relations of the model hold up against existing research, on which levels – and where research contradicts it. Live from the database; it changes as studies are added.
Test bench · register × research
Studies and data sets are assigned to a relation of the model and a level, weighted (1 wording parallel · 2 same mechanism measured · 3 tests a prediction) and shown as a matrix. Contradictions stay visible in red. Assignments are proposals until confirmed.
How to read the test bench
Weight of an assignment
1 · parallelThe study or example says something similar in other words, or the assignment of the states is a reading (all 234 examples start here).
2 · mechanism measuredThe same mechanism was measured in this system: data show it, independent of the model.
3 · prediction testedA prediction of the model was stated beforehand and tested against data (e.g. the return-channel measurement).
Cell
Sum of the weights of all confirming or parallel assignments on this level; ✕ marks at least one contradiction. Dark from 4.
Finding per relation
holdsOn at least 3 levels with weight 2 or more, no contradiction.
holds, with a contradictionAs above, but at least one study contradicts – stays visible.
holds as formAppears on at least 3 levels, but only as parallel or reading (weight 1). Breadth, not yet proof.
thesisFewer than 3 levels. Open.
refutedA tested prediction (weight 3) contradicts it on one level.
Read-only. Corinna Kost assigns the studies; every assignment marked “proposal” is still being checked. Know a study that supports or contradicts a relation? Write to corinna@kost.studio.
| Relation | Quanta | Chemistry / physics | Organism | Person | Team / project | Society / technology | Cosmos | Sacred place | Finding |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spark through condition, not effort | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | thesis |
| Feedback: density attracts density | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | thesis |
| Balance: pressure from inside against attraction | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | thesis |
| Collapse + compensation | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | thesis |
| Edge: solution where something still answers | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | thesis |
| Episodic intake (oscillation) | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | thesis |
| Beat: from a larger, slower level | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | thesis |
| Resonance: answering, not inventing | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | thesis |
| Return channel: nothing falls in without return | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | thesis |
| Constellation: parts, relations, viewpoint | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | thesis |
| Chance = unread beat (thesis) | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | thesis |
| Time from answering (thesis) | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | thesis |
| Emotion = regulation with a threshold that feels itself (thesis) | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | thesis |
| Same curve on every level (prediction 2) | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | thesis |
| Speed of release: slow enough for parts to answer each other (hypothesis) | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | thesis |
| Beauty: the model recognises itself (thesis) | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | thesis |
| The sequence runs through: spark → … → interference (examples) | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | · | thesis |
Cell = sum of weights of confirming/parallel studies; ✕ = at least one contradiction. Dark = weight ≥ 4. Click a row to see its studies.
Ways on
© 2026 Corinna Kost · The Flow Principle. The model, its sentence, the sequence of seven states and seven transitions, the spiral and the notes are published under the licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0: share with attribution, no changes, no commercial use. First published on kost.studio, 5–7 November 2026; dated record in the development protocol. Courses, tools and the Academy table are separate works of Corinna Kost.
Cite as: Kost, C. (2026). The Flow Principle: Ein Modell der Antwortbeziehungen (1.1). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.24033288 · ORCID 0009-0008-3346-668X