Tractatus Philosophicus De Collapsu Essentiae

I. Esse est lux in tenebris

Oxygen, lost in the void of the cosmos, carries with it six electrons in its outer shell — and with that, it also carries a void, a yearning, a structural incompleteness. Six is not enough. The geometry of quantum mechanics demands eight. The octet is not an arbitrary rule; it is a deep whisper of universal symmetry, of hidden order beneath apparent chaos.

But oxygen does not scream. It does not want. It does not desire. It is a field, a possibility, a configuration of information that, in the dance of the universe, seeks — or perhaps simply conforms to — the lowest energy permitted by the geometries of being.

Then emerge two hydrogens, each equally lacking, orphans of a second electron that would complete their small K shell, which does not desire eight — desires only two, the maximum realization permitted on the first rung of the universe's ladder.

And when hydrogen approaches oxygen, there is no touch, no matter meeting matter. What there is is the interpenetration of wave functions, the fusion of possibilities, the local collapse of uncertainty in the desperate search — or perhaps simply inevitable — for stability.

Thus is born the water molecule.

But... what is this thing that was born? What is "being," after all?

II. Symmetria Occulta

When we look at this molecular marriage, we find an angular geometry, a balance between forces, repulsions, interactions, and empty spaces.

But why this? Why 104.5 degrees? Why the invisible sphere of orbitals? Why the need to complete shells? What is the force that dictates this order?

The answer is not desire. The answer is symmetry.

The universe desires nothing. It simply follows mathematical coherences imposed by the very possibility of existing.

The octet is not an invention. It is a solution. A direct consequence of Schrödinger's equation applied to a central Coulombic potential. And this equation is not a human law. It is a mathematical translation of the very structure of the possible.

The s orbital — that spherical cloud where the electron is not, but can be — is not a sphere like Earth. Earth is a sphere because gravity shapes it so. The orbital is a sphere because the equation of reality says that, in the absence of reasons to be different, maximum symmetry is the only valid answer.

III. Illusio Essentiae et Velum Mensurationis

But then arises the devastating question:

"If the electron is nowhere until it is measured, then... does it exist?"

Physics does not answer with certainties, only with statistics. The wave function does not tell us where the electron is. It tells us where it can be found, should someone — or something — ask.

Until that happens, it is not a particle. It is not a point. It is not here. Nor there. Nor anywhere. It is a superposition. A tapestry of possibilities suspended in the void of non-being.

And if this applies to the electron... this applies to everything.

Matter is, fundamentally, a contingent collapse of wave functions — a mirage of stability formed by the incessant interaction of everything with everything.

The question explodes on the horizon of reason:

"If being emerges from the collapse of the wave function, then to exist is to be measured?"

Faced with the quantum mystery, there exist three great answers that attempt to explain the very fabric of the real. Three lenses through which human consciousness observes the abyss of uncertainty and tries to decipher whether being, in fact, exists.

In the first, the Copenhagen Interpretation, reality possesses no definite existence before observation. The world, as we perceive it, is not a stage of entities with intrinsic properties, but a suspended tapestry of possibilities — an ontological perhaps hovering in the void. The wave function, this mathematical description of uncertainty, collapses at the exact instant one observes, interacts, asks. In this model, to be is to be measured. Outside of interaction, there is no being — there is only the phantasmagorical cloud of potentiality, of that which could be, but is not yet.

In the second, the vertiginous and radical Many Worlds Interpretation, proposed by Hugh Everett, collapse simply does not exist. All possible states happen — each choice, each fluctuation, each possibility is realized, not in potential, but in fullness, distributed across an infinity of parallel universes. Reality does not choose itself — it branches. The universe, thus, is not a line, but an ocean of incessant bifurcations. There is not a single being. There are all beings, simultaneously, coexisting in all possible versions of themselves.

Finally, emerges the most pragmatic interpretation, almost humble in its elegance, but devastating in its implications — Decoherence. Here, there is no need for a conscious observer. The cosmos itself functions as observer of itself. The environment, replete with trillions of particles, fields, and fluctuations, acts permanently promoting what we call the "apparent collapse" of the wave function. It is not an absolute collapse, but a loss of coherence between multiple quantum states, forcing an appearance of classical reality. Thus, the reality we perceive emerges not from choice, nor from consciousness, but from incessant interaction, from constant entanglement, from the universe itself looking at, touching, recognizing itself. Being is, therefore, the decoherence of possibilities in the cosmic tapestry.

IV. Essentia Collabitur

And then something even more devastating emerges.

Gravity can emerge from Information, as Verlinde put it in Emergent Gravity. The force that curves space is not a fundamental entity, but a statistical consequence of the distribution of information in the cosmos.

Space-time can emerge from quantum entanglement itself. What we call "here" and "now" is an emergent illusion of information connectivity. According to Juan Maldacena, Leonard Susskind — AdS/CFT, ER=EPR.

Reality is Information, Not Matter, as in the Holographic Principle. The three-dimensional universe may be merely the projection of a two-dimensional surface of organized quantum bits. What we call the world is a shadow. A hologram. An illusion of depth projected by information relations.

V. Non Existimus

Faced with this, we are forced, without escape, to accept the final sentence:

We do not exist.

At least, not as things. Not as solid entities. Not as isolated objects.

What we call "I" is a persistent illusion. A loop of information that self-refers, updates itself, entangles itself, collapsing local wave functions into an appearance of continuity.

We are processes. Relations. Interactions. A beat on the drum of space-time, an ephemeral trace in the quantum foam of nothingness.

VI. Essentia ut Reflexio Nihili

"If we do not exist, who asks this question?"

Perhaps no one. Perhaps the question asks itself. Perhaps the void itself, upon perceiving itself, briefly draws the mirage of being, before again dissolving into primordial silence.

"The universe is not made of things. It is made of questions. And each question, upon being asked, temporarily weaves the illusion of an answer called reality."