Imagine a scientific world in crisis, divided by incompatible theories. Each offers a radically different intuition about reality.
For a time, technological progress masks the rift, but eventually it too falters as science fails to answer fundamental questions: Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? Confusion spreads; sensible people fall prey to charlatans. An ancient paradigm begins to crumble.
The brightest minds work tirelessly to find new equations, but something essential is missing at the very heart of science. Desperate, they launch a bold expedition to search for the source of the problem.
After facing monsters and riddles of every kind, the group reaches the center of mathematics and logic, where they discover a luminous insight: “Wholes contain their parts.” They are mesmerized—how could something so obvious ever be wrong? Disheartened, they return to their laboratories, preparing to observe the twilight of the world they once knew.
But one young biologist lingers behind. “Why must wholes contain their parts? Is an anthill without ants still an anthill? Is a brain without neurons still a brain? Is a school without students still a school? Perhaps it makes more sense the other way around: the ants contain the anthill, the neurons the brain, and the students the school.”
As she ponders in silence, the little bright idea flickers behind her. Slowly, it turns inside out like a sock and transforms: “The parts contain the wholes.”
When the expedition returns, they find a changed world. People no longer believe blindly in time and space; they feel a new intimacy between employees and companies, citizens and cities, humans and humanity.
The universe is no longer a cold void expanding to the point of rupture, but an endless canvas where humans can dialogue with their own pasts and futures. To refer to this new reality, they coin a word: impansion.
Technology and mathematics remain, but no one expects them to answer questions that have stopped making sense. It’s the dawn of a new era: the era of complexity.