📚 Similarity Theory Among Philosophical Traditions
Echoes Across Time and Thought
By Simon Raphael
🌀 Philosophical Framework
🌍 Standing in a Long Tradition
Human beings have always asked the same questions: What is the self? What is the soul? What is reality? What guides us toward good or evil?
Across cultures and ages, philosophers, mystics, and poets have sought answers in their own ways. Similarity Theory is my contribution to this same current — not a claim of superiority, but another reflection added to the river of human thought.
🔦 Plato’s Cave and the Frames of Time
Plato spoke of a cave where shadows deceived prisoners into mistaking illusion for reality. His message was that truth lies beyond appearances.
In Similarity Theory, I describe reality as frames of time through which consciousness moves, creating the illusion of motion and choice. The imagery differs, but both remind us that what we see is not the whole of what is real. What Similarity Theory adds is a structural explanation of how appearances form — frames waiting to be lit by consciousness, rather than shadows cast on a wall.
💧 Laozi’s Water and the Droplets of Attraction
The Taoist sage Laozi compared the way of the universe to water — soft, yielding, and yet stronger than stone.
In Similarity Theory, I speak of droplets of water and oil to explain attraction, resonance, and karma. The aim is similar: to show that the laws of nature mirror the laws of spirit, and that humility and respect flow from understanding these patterns. Where Laozi offered water as metaphor, Similarity Theory makes attraction a structural law: like joins with like, creating the architecture of resonance that shapes all becoming.
🔄 Nietzsche’s Eternal Return and the Map of Becoming
Nietzsche imagined the Eternal Return, the possibility that life might repeat forever, asking whether we could embrace existence with such weight.
In my work, I describe the Map of Becoming, where souls travel through avatars, dimensions, and cycles of experience. It is not identical to Nietzsche’s vision, but it touches the same chord: the challenge of affirming life and recognising its continuity beyond a single moment. Where Nietzsche posed the question as a test of affirmation, Similarity Theory frames it as a structural truth: consciousness returns through cycles, evolving through resonance and layered dimensions.
🌀 A Shared Search for Meaning
I do not place myself beside these figures to claim equality, but to acknowledge that my questions echo theirs. Just as they drew on the language of their time — caves, water, cycles — I draw on images that speak to ours: frames, droplets, quantum physics, and resonance.
Similarity Theory is not meant to replace or compete with the great traditions. It is my attempt, born of experience, to make sense of existence. What Similarity Theory adds is not a rejection of these traditions, but a structural framework that shows how their insights resonate within a larger pattern — frames, resonance, and layered consciousness. If it resonates with others, then it belongs to the same human effort that stretches back through the centuries: the search for truth, meaning, and the nature of the self.
🔬 Scientific and Philosophical Grounding
Plato’s Cave: Early philosophy of perception and reality; illusion versus truth.
Laozi’s Tao: Resonance with natural flow; water as metaphor for universal balance.
Nietzsche’s Eternal Return: Existential affirmation of recurring existence.
Similarity Theory: Builds on this lineage with frames of time, resonance, and layered consciousness.
📖 References
Plato. The Republic (c. 375 BCE). A foundational metaphor of illusion and truth, later extended in Similarity Theory through the concept of frames of time.
Laozi. Tao Te Ching (c. 4th century BCE). Water as a symbol of cosmic flow, deepened in Similarity Theory by structural laws of attraction and resonance.
Nietzsche, F. Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–85). The challenge of Eternal Return, reinterpreted in Similarity Theory through the Map of Becoming and dimensional cycles.
Raphael, S. Similarity Theory (2025). Frames of time, resonance, layered consciousness, and structural ethics — a unifying framework that echoes and extends earlier traditions.
