So, firstly, it should be noted that the smallest possible unit of the universe of Planithurth is something called a "Philosophon", which is described as an abstract quality that only philosophers can ever hope to address. That is, their universe is literally built and shaped by philosophy:
| Planiturthian mathematicians would like to think that their universe is built from mathematics, but that's only natural, after all. Planiturthian physicists would like to think that the Planiturthian universe is built from physics. Planiturthian biologists would like to think that the Planiturthian universe is built from biology. Planiturthian philosophers would like to think that the Planiturthian universe is built from philosophy. (Let me tell you a secret: it is. The fundamental unit of the Planiturthian universe is the philosophon, a unit of logic so tiny that only a philosopher could hope to split it.) |
The Mathiverse also isn't merely a virtual space that's inside of their minds, either. It is a fully-fledged meta-reality, born out of their desires for a grand unified theory of all physics built under solid mathematical foundation, which is, by the way, even directly linked to the act of desiring a monotheistic true god defining all of reality (which probably allows the Mathiverse to count as a character of sorts, putting it in the same field as
the Overvoid or
The Amaranth):
'So it's all in their minds?' I asked the Space Hopper.
'No,' he said. 'Their minds are all in It. Their brains are built from Planiturthian-universe matter, obeying Planiturthian-universe rules. Their minds are processes that go on inside their brains - and many of those processes are internal representations of that external universe. So, not surprisingly, Planiturthian minds construct - by the collective use of IMAGER - a Mathiverse that mimics the effects of those external rules pretty well. They don't always get the rules right -for all they know there may not be any ultimate rules at all - but they keep tinkering, and slowly the correspondence between Mathiversian rules and observed reality becomes extraordinarily accurate.'
'So that's all there is to it, then?' I asked him.
'Not quite,' he said. 'There's something very mysterious going on, too. Why is it that Planiturthians live in a universe where IMAGER works, anyway?'
'Why?' I asked him, after a long silence.
'Beats me,' he said.
|
| 'Well, the Planiturthians had all sorts of rational reasons, but when it comes down to it, I think it was because Planiturthian science had grown from a monotheistic religion. Most of their science was the product of a culture whose religious beliefs attributed their entire universe to a single act of creation by a single deity. Whether or not the scientists themselves were religious, this cultural trait led them to seek a single explanation for everything. The search for One Final Theory is psychologically very close to the search for One True God - though the Planiturthian scientists wouldn't have agreed with that view at all. |
As mentioned previously, the Planithurthians created the Mathiverse out of a mental process which the Space Hopper described as an "IMAGER", which is an acronym for "
Imagination, Mathematics, Analogy, Generalization, Extrapolation and Recursio", a pretty obvious reference to how humans themselves formulate / discover mathematical truths in the real world. The key difference here being that, instead of IMAGER being just thinking, it's an actual, in-universe mechanism applicable only to the People of Planithurth.
So, basically, while the Planithurthians aren't physically Tier 0 or transcendent over the Mathiverse in any way (quite the contrary, in fact), their collective consciousness expressed through the phenomenon of IMAGER is what allowed them to birth it as an expression of their formulations in an abstract meta-space.
Hence, the closest thing to a compromise me and others reached after some off-site discussion was to rate them at "
10-B.
0 with IMAGER", or whatever tier we decide the Mathiverse to be.
Although, I believe Kep in particular has some issues with this rating, which I can see myself agreeing with, so.
