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The Ontology of Existence -- sim.png, transcribed and reframed for simulation

Source: a hand-drawn brainstorm of everything a world could simulate (sim.png, 2480x3508), reviewed 2026-08-02. His ask: "review it thoroughly and turn it into a format that will help you when creating simulation mechanics." This is that format -- a faithful transcription of the diagram, then a reframing of it into the raw material a simulation framework is built from: the ENTITIES that exist, the PROCESSES they undergo, and the INTERACTIONS that couple them. It pairs with DESIGN.md (the framework architecture); this file is the CONTENT (what to simulate), that file is the STRUCTURE (how).

1. The diagram, transcribed faithfully

Five domain boxes, with interaction-verbs written ON THE EDGES between them (often rotated -- the "text isn't always oriented the way you expect" the operator warned of). Laid out:

    [ SOCIETY ]        --caring-->        [ MIND ]
        |  \                                 |
   mating,procreating,pollinating,      (cognition)
   hunting,fleeing,hiding
        |                                    |
        +------------[ LIFE  ->  DEATH ]-----+
                     (the biological continuum)
                             |
                     nutrition, toxicity
                             |
    [ OBJECTS ]                          [ STATES ]
   (what exists)                     (physical transformations)

SOCIETY (the collective / emergent): organizing, collapsing, protesting, absorbing, overthrowing, leading, following, harmony, discord, collaborating, sharing, ignoring, attacking, defending, warring.

MIND (cognition): instinct, education, experience, thinking, dreaming, worshipping, learning, understanding, adapting, fearing.

LIFE -> DEATH (one box, read left=life to right=death -- a continuum, not two categories):

OBJECTS (what exists -- a taxonomy of matter):

STATES (physical / thermodynamic transformations): burning, heating, melting, dissolving, freezing, cooling, compressing, expanding.

Edge verbs (interactions between domains):

2. The reframing: entities, processes, interactions

The diagram is really three things a simulator needs, tangled together. Untangled:

(EXPANDED 2026-08-02 on the operator's second pass -- "there are surely many more things to add, especially in the more obvious areas." His diagram (section 1) was the seed; this is the fuller working taxonomy. His originals are folded in; the many additions round out each domain. Marked + where an item extends beyond the diagram, so the growth is visible.)

A. ENTITIES -- the NOUNS. What a simulation instantiates and tracks.

An entity is a bag of STATE + the PROCESSES it is subject to. Not exclusive classes -- an animal IS matter (OBJECTS) running LIFE, that also has a MIND and belongs to a SOCIETY. The boxes are LAYERS.

By KIND (matter):

By SCALE (same ontology, every rung -- "as above, so below"): particle -> molecule -> grain -> body/organism -> aggregate/landform -> world/planet -> star system -> galaxy. A grain of sand and a planet are both "inorganic matter under gravity"; a cell and a society are both "an aggregate that organizes and collapses." The framework should let one entity-kind be instantiated at any scale.

By FORM / STRUCTURE (an entity is not just a kind + a scale, but an ARRANGEMENT of parts): every entity has a MORPHOLOGY -- a body-plan (bilateral / radial / segmented / modular / branching), PARTS (limbs, organs, tissues; or a made thing's components; or a river's reaches and tributaries), the MATERIALS it is built from, and the principle that FORM enables FUNCTION (a wing's shape IS its flight, a leaf's IS its light-catch, a gear's teeth ARE its mesh). This is what the creature factory instantiates, what the terrain engine gives a landform, what a building's structure is -- and it DEVELOPS (ontogeny: a body-plan unfolding from a seed/egg by a growth program) and can FAIL structurally (buckling, fracture, wear). KIND says WHAT a thing is; STRUCTURE says how it is PUT TOGETHER, which is half of what a simulation of it must track.

B. PROCESSES -- the VERBS. What a system computes (a step that changes state).

The full menu, by domain and sub-group. Build bottom-up: PHYSICAL underlies LIFE underlies MIND underlies SOCIETY. (His diagram verbs are here; + marks the obvious additions from this pass.)

1. PHYSICAL / STATES -- act on ANY matter; the foundation weather, erosion, fire all reduce to:

2. LIFE (the biological continuum, birth -> death; gated by physical conditions):

3. MIND (for entities with cognition; drives which LIFE/SOCIETY verb to run):

4. SOCIETY (emergent over many minded entities; reads the entities beneath it):

C. INTERACTIONS -- the EDGES. How systems COUPLE (one system's output is another's input).

The most important part for a LIVING world -- "weather that actually changes the world it falls on." Each is an explicit coupling channel. (His four, plus the obvious families.)

D. CROSS-CUTTING PRIMITIVES -- the machinery any simulation is built from

A/B/C enumerate the CONTENT (the nouns, verbs, and edges of a world). But every simulation, whatever its domain, is also built from a handful of STRUCTURES that cut ACROSS all domains -- and the diagram had none of them, because they are not things IN the world but the shape of any MODEL of it. Naming them is what makes the framework general: a new sim picks its content from A/B/C and its machinery from here. (Added 2026-08-10 toward the operator's "a framework for just about any simulation, grounded in realistic principles.")

These eight are the "physics of simulation" -- orthogonal to the domain content, present in every world. A comprehensive sim is (content from A/B/C) x (machinery from D), the same way a system is (domain-process) x (scale). Most of them already run implicitly in the built systems; naming them lets the next system reach for the right structure on purpose instead of rediscovering it.

3. How this drives the framework (see DESIGN.md for the architecture)

Faithful-transcription caveats

A fold-in backlog -- which areas DEFINED in this ontology are not yet a running Natura system, ranked with how each folds in -- is kept in the sidecar ONTOLOGY-FOLD-IN-BACKLOG.md, deliberately OUT of this file so the reference stays a reference and not a worklog. (Headline there: the CHEMICAL layer -- rust, patina, ferment, precipitate -- is the biggest unbuilt piece and unifies the alchemist's-bench + photography art ideas with a real sim system.)