The Split
Structured Ontology
2 Layers (Metaphysics)
What is real, and what it means for something to exist.
Material World ⊃ Ideas
Recent Tidbits:
Stories, Quotes, and FAQs.
The wisdom builder tidbits that feed the columns, articles, and trainer.
Metaphysics
Featured Story
Philosophy
Story
Spirituality is exploration.
Material-Spiritual Framework
New Look
Metaphysics
The Material-Spiritual Framework divides spiritual ideas into agnostic, non-theistic, or theistic. Spiritual ideas can also be calibrated to reality as empirically true, rationally true, speculative, or disproven. Speculative ideas remain open but unsupported; disproven ideas have failed against reality and should be released as truth.
Featured QUOTE
Updated This Week
Philosophy
Quote
“We are all connected to each other biologically, to the Earth chemically, and to the rest of the universe atomically.”
- Carl Sagan
- circa 1980
We Are Stardust
Carl Sagan had many similar quotes to this.
Carl Sagan reminds us that we are intimately connected to the universe. The particles that form our bodies are borrowed from a cosmic pool of just 17 particles and four forces. Even more humbling, the molecules within us were forged in the hearts of stars, linking us directly to the vast cosmos that surrounds us. The wise perspective is humbling: we are not separate things dropped into the cosmos—we are temporary arrangements of the cosmos itself.
Featured FAQ
Philosophy
FAQ
Did Copernicus remove humanity from the center of the universe?
Copernicus
Nicolaus Copernicus removed humanity from the center of the universe, which removed arrogance. By removing the assumption that we are the center of the universe, he demonstrated that the idea that position equals importance is not necessarily true. He stripped away the comforting assumption that importance comes from position. The deeper lesson here philosophically is that meaning isn’t guaranteed by position and that we don’t yet fully understand the importance of humans on one planet among trillions.
Updated Tidbits
08 Aug 2026
(Updated 5 days ago)
08 Aug 2026
(Updated 1 week ago)
Philosophy
Term
Impermanence
Metaphysics
08 Aug 2026
(Updated 1 week ago)
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Metaphysics
What ultimately is.
Structured Ontology
TST Metaphysics examines the fundamental structure of reality — matter, energy, space, time, causation, and possibility. It asks not only what exists, but how existence is organized and constrained. Grounded in science yet aware of conceptual limits, TST Metaphysics avoids both naive materialism and untethered speculation. It explores being as structured, layered, and partially knowable through disciplined models.
Deep-Dive Articles
The Material-Spiritual Framework: A Philosophy of Spirituality
Michael Alan Prestwood
June 1, 2026
The Material-Spiritual Framework separates shared empirical reality from personal spiritual meaning, allowing people to respect belief while still testing public claims against the material world.
TST Doxastic Formation: Public Belief, Tribe, and Worldview
Michael Alan Prestwood
April 8, 2026
This is your life. Embrace the beliefs you understand and believe in, not just the beliefs you inherited.
TST Theory of Truth: Reality-First Correspondence
March 1, 2026
What makes an idea true? Truth is successful alignment between our representations and a determinate, mind-independent reality.
TST Metaphysics: The Split
March 1, 2026
The split separates our ideas and the material world. To live in harmony with nature, embrace the idea that our rational ideas must be internally ...
Compare: TST and Its Neighbors
February 27, 2026
TST Philosophy does not appear from nowhere. It grows from ancient and modern neighbors, then reorganizes, clarifies, and extends them into a science-first framework aimed ...
Must-Reads
Authenticity
Existential Toolkit: Evolution’s Consciousness Misstep
At its core, existentialism is about discovering your authentic self. You, in your environment, in your time, living life your way.
Epistemology
The Limits of Language and Understanding
Some skepticism questions our words. Deeper skepticism questions whether we can ever truly know.
Ancient Humans
The Evolution of Vocabulary in Ancient Humans
The evolution of language is the evolution of communication. From touch which evolved about 800 million years ago to human words. Along the journey, communication ...
New Ideas
OVM
The Material-Spiritual Framework: A Philosophy of Spirituality
The Material-Spiritual Framework separates shared empirical reality from personal spiritual meaning, allowing people to respect belief while still testing public claims against the material world.
2 Layers (Metaphysics)
TST Metaphysics: The Split
The split separates our ideas and the material world. To live in harmony with nature, embrace the idea that our rational ideas must be internally ...
OVM
Mindscape Framework
The Mindscape Framework presents a layered philosophy of the mind: consciousness is the structured experience of reality, heuristics are its evolved shortcuts, and worldview and ...
Updated Articles
TST COLUMN
08 Apr 2026
Debut
Philosophy
Paper
TST Doxastic Formation: Public Belief, Tribe, and Worldview
Personal Belief
Wed 8 Apr 2026
(4 months ago)
Updated 4 weeks ago.
TST COLUMN
25 Mar 2026
Philosophy
Paper
TST Theory of Truth: Reality-First Correspondence
TST Philosophy
Sun 1 Mar 2026
(6 months ago)
Updated 1 month ago.
TST COLUMN
07 Mar 2019
Debut
History
Article
Understanding Colonial America Dates, Holidays, and Calendar
Thu 7 Mar 2019
(7 years ago)
Updated 2 months ago.
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