A philosophical worldview or belief system grounded on the 20th century discovery that Information, rather than Matter, is the fundamental substance of everything in the universe. It is intended to be the 21st century successor to the ancient worldviews of Materialism and Idealism. An Update from Bronze Age to Information Age. It's also a Theory – of – Everything that covers, not just matter & energy, but also Life & Mind & Love.
Post 156.May 16, 2026
NATURA NATURANS
Naturalized Supernature
Spinoza’s non-traditional conception of Cosmos has typically been labeled as Pantheism, which identifies God with spacetime Nature. But in a letter to a German theologian, he wrote "as to the view of certain people that I identify god with nature (taken as a kind of mass or corporeal matter), they are quite mistaken"⁶. Instead, his god-model is more like PanEnTheism⁷, in which the Deity exists outside of space-time as immaterial Potential, and within the created world as both Mind and Matter. Although, in the 17th century, Spinoza had no good reason to believe that the physical world (space-time) had a finite beginning in a burst of energy out of nowhere (Eternity), he made an ontological distinction between immanent and transcendent aspects of his God.
For Spinoza, the cosmos is a Mode⁸ under two attributes of Thoughtand Extension. Aspects of the universe that are extended in space can be understood as Material objects. But the Mental features of the world are obviously immaterial. So, like Aristotle, he viewed Substance as an essence, or potential, that can be actualized as a combination of Hyle (matter) and Form (structure). Yet, in my own philosophical worldview, that multi-potent essence is Information⁹, which can manifest as mental Ideas, causal Energy, or tangible Matter. One Substance (essence , general Form), many modes (attributes, aspects, specific forms). So I coined a neologism to encapsulate, not just two, but three natural modes (thought & extension & causation) of a single essence : EnFormAction, the power to transform general Potential into many modes. This potent but invisible essence was traditionally called Spirit or Soul.
Einstein identified vibrating Energy (light), with measurable Mass, and spatial Matter in his equation E=MC². Which seems to be similar to Aristotle’s compound of raw potential (Hyle) with structural design (Form), where mathematical Mass serves as the Hyle and energetic Light as the organizing force, which combine into the stuff that our senses are attuned to. Ironically, Einstein said that he believed in the God of Spinoza. But he may not have fully realized how that 300 year old god model could anticipate our modern Cosmology, combining Big Bang, with Quantum Fields, and Information theory.
Spinoza, in the age of Enlightenment, rejected the 1800 year-old god-model of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and may have anticipated the philosophical & scientific concept of PanEnTheism, that is emerging in the 21st century. In this case, god and creation consist of the same invisible-but-potent “spiritual” substance (like Einstein’s Energy) that manifests in many modes. So, it’s monistic instead of dualistic. And no miraculous interventions are needed, since the divine Will is expressed in the form of universal natural Laws. This eliminates most of the mystical and mythical implications of a trans-cendent King ruling his domain via mundane political institutions.
6. Spinoza’s Theism : Baruch Spinoza later claimed that "Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived." "Individual things are nothing but modifications of the attri-butes of God, or modes by which the attributes of God are expressed in a fixed and definite manner." Though Spinoza has been called the "prophet" and "prince" of pantheism, in a letter to Henry Oldenburg Spinoza states that: "as to the view of certain people that I identify god with nature (taken as a kind of mass or corporeal matter), they are quite mistaken". For Spinoza, our universe (cosmos) is a mode under two attributes of Thought and Extension. God has infinitely many other attributes which are not present in our world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panentheism
7. PanEnTheism : "all in God" is the belief that the divine intersects every part of the universe and also extends beyond space and time.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panentheism
8. Mode : In philosophy, a mode refers to the particular way or state in which a substance exists, rather than the substance itself. It contrasts a "how" against a "what". Think of a substance as clay and a mode as the shape (a square or a sphere) that clay takes at any given moment. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=mode+philosophy
9. Information : The simple definition of information is the act of informing - the communi-cation of knowledge from a sender to a receiver that informs (literally shapes) the receiver. Now information is neither matter nor energy, though it needs matter to be embodied, and energy to be communicated. https://www.informationphilosopher.com/introduction/information/
SPINOZA’s PANTHEISM Baruch Spinoza’s God is Nature, whose Substance is not Matter, but a single, infinite, indivisible, and self existent essence, which is the cause of everything that exists. Not just the material world, but the cosmos of Matter, Life and Mind.
God’s spirit body : God is sometimes conceived as an immaterial being (without a body), which information philosophy accepts, since God is quintessentially an idea, pure information. https://www.informationphilosopher.com/problems/god/
EnFormAction
and its modes
CAUSES and MODES
Formal = Design
Efficient = Energy
Material = Bodies
Final = Purpose
Note Click on words highlighted in blue to open another document with a relevant definition.
BACK
NEXT
Forum
