Who Created the World(s) and How? A Thought Experiment Among Science Fiction, Physics, and Theology in the Novella Professor A. Dońda by Stanisław Lem

Abstract

This paper interprets Stanisław Lem’s novella Professor A. Dońda as a thought experiment. In the novella, Lem proposes Dońda’s law, a formulation that allows for a sophisticated theory of creation, at once theological and scientific. This is based on the equivalence of mass-energy-information and on the existence of Dońda’s barrier, which limits the accretion of knowledge. The novella is discussed in the context of Lem’s conception of the art of writing as the art of translating—in this case, translating theological issues into the language of physics and computer science. The result of this translation, which is effectively a thought experiment, is that even if man were to discover the real mechanism of the creation of the world, neither the existence of God nor the non-existence of God could be unambiguously deduced from understanding the mechanism. The protagonist of the novella articulates a theory of being whose initial premise and fundamental category is the concept of error. The paper provides a thorough analysis of the issues raised by the novella and a discussion of genre. The discussion broadens to include the context of contemporary theories in physics, mainly the mass-energy-information principle (MEIE) and the information catastrophe.

1. Introduction

Stanisław Lem’s work serves as an endless source of inspiration, as demonstrated by numerous in-depth academic studies, international conferences, and translations available across almost the entire world1. Memoirs of a Space Traveler is among Lem’s widely known books, and its protagonist, Ijon Tichy, is one of Lem’s most successful characters. However, despite the enduring popularity of Memoirs, the volume contains a novella which, to my knowledge, has not yet attracted much scholarly attention2. That novella, titled Professor A. Dońda (PAD) cannot, of course, be compared to the intensively studied masterpieces such as Solaris, The Futurological Congress, or Summa Technologiae; nevertheless, it deserves special attention for a number of reasons, which are discussed below. But first, let us briefly summarise the contents of The Star Diaries and Memoirs of a Space Traveler and the development of its hero and narrator.

Composed over a considerable period, from the early 1950s to the early 1980s, these volumes chronicle the exploits of Ijon Tichy, who also appears in other literary works by Lem, including The Futurological Congress and Peace on Earth. He is depicted as a solitary individual, devoid of familial bonds, living on Earth. However, it is hardly possible to visit him at his earthly home, as he is constantly travelling, visiting planets across the universe. His biography is very fragmentary. Despite this, Tichy is portrayed as a dynamic and proactive individual who values interpersonal relationships, possesses a talent for storytelling, and derives great satisfaction from entertaining his interlocutors. He is an experienced cosmic traveller, characterised by his amiable disposition and his ability to observe and narrate his experiences visiting diverse civilisations and various locations in the universe. Tichy is eager to cooperate and accept others’ views of reality, even when they oppose human experience. Consequently, he is accustomed to describing different, in his case planetary, societies and trying to understand “how the world is” by exploring scientific achievements, philosophical systems, ethical rules, or policies. Notwithstanding the challenges he encounters, Tichy consistently demonstrates an ability to surmount adversity. This propensity has led to frequent comparisons with fictional characters such as Münchhausen and Gulliver (see Jarzębski 2020). However, in Professor A. Dońda, Tichy more closely resembles Ismael from Moby Dick than either Münchhausen or Gulliver. He is not the sole survivor of the catastrophe, but he alone remains to narrate the life and opinions of Affidavid Dońda, Professor. This occurs after the professor has abandoned Tichy in his pursuit of tobacco (PAD, p. 158).

The present paper will examine this novella, as it provides a profound insight into fundamental aspects of Lem’s narrative art and thought. With respect to the concept of narrative art, the novella can be interpreted as exemplifying Lem’s theory of literature (see Section 6). Of particular significance to Lem’s thought is the brilliant formulation of what he calls Dońda’s law, which appears to be a very fruitful hermeneutical principle applicable to the interpretation of Genesis (see Section 4) and contains significant theological and physical facets. Needless to say, the theories of creation and the theory of being hold significant importance in numerous philosophical discourses. A synthesised presentation of the life and opinions of Professor Dońda, as well as the summary of the novella, is entrusted to a kind of curriculum vitae (CV) proposed in the second section, while the third section offers some reflections on the literary genre of PAD. In the fifth section, the current state of research on the MEIE Principle is examined. This topic is of a particular relevance to the plot of the novella under discussion.

All these elements form the coherent unity within which the novella can be read as a thought experiment, the outcome of which is complemented by a particular theory of being. To conduct this experiment, Lem formulates a mental model of the world, incorporating subtly modified laws of physics in what can be referred to as Professor Dońda’s and Ijon Tichy’s World (DTW). However, the world in question shares many points of contact with our own—sufficiently to the extent that we may regard the thought experiment described in the novella as relevant to ours and to Lem’s actual real world (LRW). In particular, two aspects appear to be common between those worlds: the results of Lem’s thought experiment and his theory of being. Rebus sic stantibus, Section 6 of the paper gives some general considerations on the notion of God in The Star Diaries, Lem’s Theory of Literature, and on Thought Experiments, while the seventh and final section focuses on the novella PAD as a thought experiment in theology.

2. Professor Affidavid Dońda’s CV

2.1. Personal Information

Affidavid Dońda was artificially conceived in Bolivia, in the laboratory of Professor Harley Pombernack and Dr Juggernaut. The former was researching the heredity of convicts, while the latter was artificially fertilising human eggs. By mistake, one of Pombernack’s slides ended up in the Juggernaut’s freezer with human spermatozoa. As a result, a cell from the glossal epithelium of a sentenced Mestizo woman from the Navajo Indians was used to fertilise an egg from a donor who was a White Russian woman. For this reason, the Navajo woman is considered to be Dońda’s father. He then had two so-called gestational carriers: the Afro-Caribbean extremist and, for the last six days, the Quaker woman, Miss Seabury. Miss Seabury suffered a miscarriage as a result of the shock caused by a submarine accident in the super-aquarium at Disneyland. Fortunately, the premature baby was saved. Therefore, it is true to say that Dońda had “two and a half mothers”, and his father was also a woman, as “scientific progress has destroyed the old principle of Roman law, that mater semper certa est”. The presence of male chromosomes in his genotype was attributed to the fact that “at Pombernack’s laboratory microscope slides were given to frogs to lick”.

His last name, Dońda, is attributed to Pombernack’s assistant, who had noticed the mistake of the displaced slide and wanted to stop the fertilisation by shouting “Don’t do it!, but he shouted it indistinctly, as Americans are wont to do, so it sounded like Dondo!. Afterwards, when the birth was filled in, somehow this sound came up, hence the surname Dońda”. He lived first in Mexico and then in Turkey, where he was naturalised. Dońda mistakenly gave himself the name Affidavid, which is the name for the type of certificate, when he left Turkey and, having obtained the required affidavit, wrote this word in “the wrong box on the application form”. It was during his stay in Turkey that he converted from Episcopalianism to Zen Buddhism (for details and quotes see PAD, pp. 132–34).

2.2. Education

Professor Dońda graduated in Turkey from three faculties of exact sciences; his proper specialisation was designing broiler processing plants, yet he did not practise the profession because like a Buddhist he did not relish seeing chickens suffer (PAD, pp. 134–35).

2.3. Research Specialisation/Research Profile

Svarnetics has been his research specialisation, and he took an interdisciplinary approach. The name of his discipline is due to a telegrapher’s blunder, who “had simply distorted the key word used in his telegram” of invitation to accept the chair at Kulaharian University (PAD, p. 157). Not knowing what Svarnetics is about, Dońda has invented a new line of research focusing on the word “between”. Writing papers for European journals, he used “at first the term “interstitics”, and its students began to be commonly known as “betweenians””3.

Dońda used the grant from the Ministry of Culture to investigate the borderline between rationalism and irrationalism, trying to arrive at the mathematisation of casting a spell in the context of the Lamblian Hottu Wabottu tribe, which had practised persecuting its enemies “in effigy”. Professor Dońda has created the digital modelling of that practice, and thus arrived at the meaning of Svarnetics, that is the Stochastic Verification of Automatised Rules of Negative Enchantment. Therefore, the Svarnetics is to be considered an INTERdisciplinary study, between magic and science (informatics/physics).

2.4. Employment History

• Professor of Svarnetics at Kulahari University, Lamblia (Africa), first in the Faculty of Svarnetics, later transformed into the Institute of Experimental and Theoretical Svarnetics.
• The Director of the Kulahari University Graduate Program in Svarnetics (very requested, because many of his doctoral Lamblian students “believed in the computer’s magical powers”, and it was “political magic that occupied their thoughts, as having the power to make Lamblia a world leader”; PAD, p. 137).
• The Chairman of the Lamblian Council of Ministers’ Year 2000 Committee, with the task of casting horoscopes and magically making them come true.
• Professor of Svarnetics at the Faculty and Institute of Svarnetics of the Lumila University, Gurunduwayu.

2.5. Grants and Projects

• The Lamblian Ministry of Culture grant for research on the country’s own traditions.
• The Lamblian Ministry of Agriculture grant to optimise magic spells against drought and crop pests.
• The successful project of the Methodology of Zeroing Illicit Murder, MZIMU for short, to face the rise of crime, especially against life in Lamblia. For that reason, he earned the title of “a powerful sorcerer [who] was at work in Kulahari, Bwana Kubwa Dońda, whose MZIMU was alert to every move the citizens made” (PAD, p. 137).
• The project “to program into a computer all the curses, magical charms, sorcerer’s spells, incantations, and shamanic formulae that mankind had ever created” (PAD, p. 145) developed at the Lumila University (the State of Gurunduwayu). For that project, he received a grant of 11 million dollars to buy the latest IBM optical computer.

2.6. Awards/Distinctions/Merits (Demerits)

• Dońda’s announcement and the first paper on Svarnetics sent to the British journal Nature were published under the heading “Curiosa”, and its author was declared a “cybershaman”, and his enterprise a “common fraud”.
• Dońda received the title of the witch doctor honoris causa from the group of Lamblian sorcerers.
• Nature, after the announcement of Dońda’s law at the Oxford Cybernetic Conference, wrote “that according to Dońda any infinitely long magic spell is bound to come true”, introducing in this way “muddled nonsense onto the waters of alleged precision”. These comments from Nature have earned him the epithet of the “Prophet of the cybernetic Absolute” (PAD, p. 139). In addition, Nature has called him a buffoon4.
• After the Watershed Moment, that is, after the critical density had been reached, a chain reaction kicked off, and the information disappeared because it changed into matter, giving birth to the Cosmoslet, Professor Dońda received “some honorary degrees as a matter of urgency” (PAD, p. 155).

2.7. Publications/Conferences

• When he was still at Kulahari University, Dońda participated in a world cybernetics conference in Oxford, where he delivered a paper on Dońda’s law (PAD, p. 138).
• On Dońda’s law, appeared articles in Newsweek, Time, Der Spiegel, L’Express, and Punch.
• A short report, sent to the USA and to Nature, on the risk of the end of civilisation due to approaching the limit for the accretion of knowledge, with the message “Cognovi naturam rerum. The Lord’s countdown made the world” (PAD, p. 150).
• Introduction to Svarnetics, or Inquiry into the General Technology of Cosmoproduction (in preparation).
• A treatise, “missing from the register of philosophical types”, that is “an anthology of Apostasy, in other words, a theory of existence based on error” (in preparation; PAD, p. 158).

2.8. Main Achievements

• Formulation of the so-called Dońda’s law (PAD, pp. 138–39).
• Formulation of the MEIE Principle (PAD, p. 149).
• Experimental verification of the MEIE Principle and determination of the mass of a bit (PAD, pp. 146–47 and 156).
• Definition of the limit for the accretion of knowledge (PAD, p. 149).
• Specification of the critical mass of information (PAD, p. 148).
• Methodology and theory of creation.
• Theory of being whose initial premise and fundamental category is the concept of error.

3. Professor A. Dońda as a Science-Fiction Novella

Is PAD a science fiction novella? The answer can only be affirmative, as the novella displays the essential traits of this literary genre. Let us accept the view of science fiction narration as presented by Istvan Csicsery-Ronay in his The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction (Csicsery-Ronay 2012). Following Csicsery-Ronay, a science fiction narration is “a particular, recognisable mode of thought and art”, and “this mode is a constellation of diverse intellectual and emotional interests and responses that are particularly active in an age of restless technological transformation” (Csicsery-Ronay 2012, pp. 17–18). He considers seven such categories: fictive neology, fictive novums, future history, imaginary science, the science-fictional sublime, the science-fictional grotesque, and the Technologiade. All of these categories are present in PAD. As a point of reference for the detailed presentation of each of these categories, we direct the reader to Csicsery-Ronay’s book. In the following section, we will attempt to uncover their presence in PAD5.

Fictive neology refers to “new words and other signs that indicate worlds changed from their own, just as viewers of visual science fiction expect special visual effects, and listeners expect special sonic effects representing new sense-perceptions and aesthetic designs” (Csicsery-Ronay 2012, p. 18). PAD, as compared to Lem’s other books, is rather poor in regards to neologisms. One cannot find here examples of new neology in the sense of “extrapolative names close to the norm of pseudorealistic plausibility” (Csicsery-Ronay 2012, p. 46), like, for example, the bottombiter chair ant (Multipodium pseudostellatum Trylopii), the snakefooted telescoper (Anencephalus pseudoopticus tripedius Klaczkinensis), or the trippersneak (Serpens vitiosus Reichenmantlii), that populate other universes Ijon Tichy wants to save6. There are no robots either, like the great constructors Klapaucius and Trurl (Lem 1973). Apart from toponyms (fictitious names of African cities and towns, which are similar to real African place names), there is only one new word in PAD, which is an acronym: SVARNEtics. This acronym is important because it represents a new interdisciplinary science. This new science, however, is really just a cover for Dońda’s actual research programme, which will lead to the professor’s revolutionary discoveries. The second acronym, on the other hand, cognate in the same way, i.e., MZIMU, cannot be considered a neologism for reasons that will be soon explained shortly; this acronym serves as a tangent point between the DTW and the LRW. In any case, both acronyms effectively represent a kind of “neology without neologisms” (Csicsery-Ronay 2012, p. 40).

Fictive novums is described by Csicsery-Ronay’s, with reference to Darko Suvin as “radical transformations of human history”, “a rationally explicable material phenomenon, the result of an invention or discovery, whose unexpected appearance elicits a wholesale change in the perception of reality” (Csicsery-Ronay 2012, pp. 18–19). In PAD, the fictive novum is represented by the emergence of a Cosmoslet as a result of the transformation of information into matter as predicted by Professor Dońda7. Consequently, in the DTW “the catastrophe had occurred, exactly as the professor had predicted. It had had the mightiest effect in the developed countries. Think how many libraries were computerised in the past decade! Until in a split second an ocean of wisdom evaporated from all their tapes, crystals, ferrite disks and cryotrons” (PAD, p. 153).

As Professor Dońda put it, “it was not the end of the world, just the end of one civilisation” (PAD, p. 129), and the impact of the phenomenon on different parts of the world was not, of course, the same (see: PAD, pp. 153–54). Since there was no end of the world, it is reasonable to assume that as far as the future history of the DTW is concerned, a phase of civilisation reconstruction will follow. However, PAD does not provide any details on this, except perhaps a mention of the fact that Professor Dońda has equipped himself for this new phase by following Robinson Crusoe’s example, not forgetting journals such as “Nature, Physical Review, Physical Abstracts, Futurum, and some files full of newspaper clippings about Dońda’s law (PAD, p. 156). This presages a reconstruction based on science that, however, keeps Dońda’s law in mind in order to avoid a repetition of the catastrophe.

PAD describes a universe with the laws of physics partially different from the LRW physics. In this sense, it represents a subtle example of imaginary science. The laws that Professor Dońda hypothesises and then verifies experimentally are formulated on the basis of a kind of extended application of known principles of physics in real-world physics. In this way, Einstein’s mass–energy equivalence principle is extended to information (the MEIE Principle), while in analogy to the concept of the critical mass of uranium, the principle of critical information density is formulated. From a rhetorical point of view, one could speak of the use of a trope in the broad sense, based on an analogy of processes.

Science-fictional sublime. In PAD, a reader finds a superb example of what after Kant is called the dynamic sublime. Csicsery-Ronay summarises the concept in that way: “[the dynamic sublime] is a response to the sheer physical presence of powerful phenomena, to the superhuman force manifest in magnificent geological formations, waterfalls, storms; that is, those aspects of nature that cause the ego to feel small in the world. In both cases, the perceiving mind is forced to fall back. But in this falling back, it becomes aware that it has per se the capacity to conceive of the “supersensible”, the underlying rational but inapprehensible order of things shared by the mind and nature” (Csicsery-Ronay 2012, p. 233). In PAD, the experience in question concerns the birth of “a surprisingly tiny little Cosmos, a Universelet, a Minispace” or Cosmoslet, which Lem describes in words of particular intensity, in a passage that teems with terminology taken from articles on theoretical physics and cosmology and which would merit a separate rhetorical study. It is worth reading this description in its entirety:

This Microcosmoslet looks like—it’s teeny-weeny, and so tightly closed that it’s totally impossible to break into it. Apparently from the standpoint of our physics it constitutes a special sort of nothingness, namely Whollydense, Totally Impermeable Nothingness. It doesn’t absorb light, and it cannot be stretched, squeezed, smashed, or bored into, because it is situated outside our Universe, although it appears to be inside it. Light slides off its rounded sides, randomly accelerated particles pass it by, and I don’t understand the statement issued by the authorities, according to which this “Cosmoslet” […] is a universe, absolutely equal to our own, in other words it contains nebulae, galaxies, star clouds, and maybe planets too by now, with life hatching on them.

(PAD, p. 155)

As far as science-fictional grotesque is concerned, it must be remembered that the DTW has a lot in common with the LRW. If, following Csicsery-Ronay, we agree to interpret science-fictional grotesque as “the inversion, and frequent concomitant, of the technosublime”, which “represents the collapse of ontological categories that reason has considered essentially distinct, creating a spectacle of impossible fusions” (Csicsery-Ronay 2012, p. 21); then, the explanation of the phenomena of Black and White Holes “discovered by astrophysicists”, as “places where unusually powerful civilisations have attempted to get around Dońda’s barrier, or blow it to kingdom come, but it didn’t work: what they actually did was to blow themselves out of the Universe” (PAD, p. 157) could be considered an example of science fiction grotesque. Nevertheless, it is so as referred to as the LRW.

To a decidedly lesser, and I would say marginal, extent, the role of magic in Professor Dońda’s discoveries, the role codified in the name of his discipline, svarnetics, could be seen as grotesque. This is grotesque, not to say sarcastic, in both worlds: in the LRW and in DTW.

The Technologiade. Csicsery-Ronay interprets the last “beauty” of science fiction narration in terms of “the epic of the struggle surrounding the transformation of the cosmos into a technological regime” (Csicsery-Ronay 2012, p. 336). The struggle can have two forms: the expansive space opera and the intensive techno-Robinsonade. The first one is absent in PAD, while the second finds its exemplification in the life and opinions of Professor Dońda. In fact, “the techno-robinsonade […] develops out of the class of narrative models” and becomes “the modern adventure cluster, consisting of the modern colonial adventure tale” (Csicsery-Ronay 2012, p. 336). Professor Dońda perfectly fits the hero of the classic robinsonade described by Csicsery-Ronay as the Handy Man. It is a figure who possesses skill in the handling of tools and has many ideas devoted to problem-solving. What is particularly relevant as far as PAD is concerned is the fact that “the Handy Man is an adventurer, although not always a willing one. He is generally induced or forced out of a culturally comfortable, predictable home environment, to exotic and undeveloped regions. There he either solves a fundamental problem” (Csicsery-Ronay 2012, p. 351). In that sense, the Handy Man recalls Odysseus, Jason, or Theseus.

As can be seen, PAD displays all the characteristics of a science fiction narrative according to Csicsery-Ronay. In this sense it can be considered as belonging to the science fiction literary genre. The seven “beauties” in PAD, rather than features of a narrative per se, “should be understood in rationalistic terms” representing mental schemes through which man organises his thinking. Lem would presumably agree with Csicsery-Ronay’s view of “science fictionality as a way of thinking about the world” (Csicsery-Ronay 2012, p. 10).

Two questions arise at this point: in what sense is the DTW also LRW, and how does a rational understanding of existence in our world come about, by what mechanism? The answer to the second question can be summarised in three words: through thought experiment. Subsequent Section 6 and Section 7 will be devoted to the explication of this question. Here, however, let us dwell on the first one for a moment.

Mention has already been made of the fact that the DTW differs from the LRW essentially with regard to certain laws of physics, specified in the description of Professor Dońda’s contributions to science. Added to this is also the fact of the presence in PAD of Ijon Tichy himself, a link between this novella and the accounts of the famous astronaut’s many star voyages, as well as a reference to Professor Tarantoga, also present in some of Ijon Tichy’s intergalactic adventures (PAD, p. 129). Actually, Ijon Tichy’s name is not mentioned even once in PAD, yet the above references attest to his identity as a narrator of the story.

For the rest, the DTW looks just like the LRW. Apart from the two fictitious African countries, there are the same institutions (e.g., the FAO, the British Museum, IBM, and Air France), the same magazines (Nature, Physical Review, and others), and the same places (Paris, Istanbul, and Disneyland). There would also be three other points of conjunction that have to be pointed out.

Life in imaginary African countries, as described in PAD, satirically portrays the life of the Polish People’s Republic (Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa) in the 1970s. A reader with even a superficial knowledge of the situation in Poland in these years would recognise the satire in quite a few situations described by Lem, such as “The Social Contract” (PAD, p. 140). That Lamblia and Gurunduwayu are portrayals of Poland at the time is attested also by certain details, including the use of the acronym MZIMU and the usage of the expression Bwana Kubwa.

These two terms were well known to all Poles of the period and entered almost into everyday use. This is thanks to Henryk Sienkiewicz, a Polish writer and Nobel Prize winner, who uses these terms in his work In Desert and Wilderness. It is a book, much loved and read by many, as it belonged to the canon of school readings of all Polish pupils for many years, which strongly influenced the vision of the African continent in the Polish imagination8.

In PAD, describing the torments of the chickens in the broiler processing plants, Lem uses the expression “poultry Auschwitzes”, together with the name of Wagner, whose overtures in particular were played for chickens “because they sow panic. The chickens start flapping their wings, which makes their breast muscles grow, the most significant in culinary terms” (PAD, p. 135). These details evoke Lem’s experiences of horror and brutality that he endured and observed as a young man during World War II, which involved his escape from death during a pogrom and the tragic loss of most of his relatives in the Holocaust (see Gajewska 2016).

Finally, it is necessary to point out an element that unites the DTW and the LRW in perhaps the most significant way, as it is present in both: it is the understanding of human existence. In the year 1972 (the same year of PAD) Wisława Szymborska’s volume of poetry Wszelki wypadek (Could Have) was published in Poland. The title poem of the collection thus describes human life (Szymborska 1996):

• It could have happened.
• It had to happen.
• It happened earlier. Later.
• Nearer. Farther off.
• It happened, but not to you.
• You were saved because you were the first.
• You were saved because you were the last.
• Alone. With others.
• On the right. The left.
• Because it was raining. Because of the shade.
• Because the day was sunny.
• You were in luck—there was a forest.
• You were in luck—there were no trees.
• You were in luck—a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake,
• A jamb, a turn, a quarter-inch, an instant…
• So you’re here? Still dizzy from
• another dodge, close shave, reprieve?
• One hole in the net and you slipped through?

In turn, Professor Dońda, recounting his life at the end of PAD, says: “In my fate everything has been topsy-turvy! The whole thing took shape as the result of accidents—crazy ones at that. It was by mistake that I came to be born. It was because of an error that I got my name. My surname is a misunderstanding. It was through an error that I came to create Svarnetics”9.

The significance given in both texts to the case that governs human life is remarkable. It is therefore reasonable to hypothesise that Professor Dońda’s theory of being is applicable to both. For it is a case, an error, that turns out to be a fundamental category of being. For this motive he would like to complete “the register of philosophical types, namely an anthology of Apostasy, in other words a theory of existence based on error, because error stamps its mark on error, error puts error to use, error produces error, until random fate becomes the Fate of the World” (PAD, p. 158)10.

It is precisely this theory of being that firmly unites the world of Dońda and the LRW: it essentially states that the fate and understanding of life in both worlds are similar. Or even something more: that the inhabitants of these two worlds are alike. Patricio Pron therefore rightly writes in his introduction to the Castilian edition of Lem’s novella that PAD “belongs squarely in the [science fiction] genre, however; but only if one accepts, with Darko Suvin, that the purpose of science fiction is to produce a “cognitive estrangement” from the reader’s empirical reality in order to gain a rational understanding of the […] conditions of existence: it is those “conditions”, and not future ones, that Professor A. Dońda narrates, since, in spite of everything, the world in which the story takes place is our own” (Pron 2021). Therefore, the DTW and the LRW are in many ways overlapping, differing essentially in certain laws of physics. What are these laws of physics?

4. Physics, Informatics, and the Creation of Universes—On Dońda’s Theorem and Its Implications

Dońda’s law turns out to be the focal point of PAD, as it represents a kind of hermeneutic principle leading to theory, or to put it better, to theories of world creation. The idea of the law stems from the brilliant interpretation of what Lem calls the Rosenblatt’s rule.

Dońda’s law has its roots in Rosenblatt’s rule. Lem writes the following:

Frank Rosenblatt, the inventor of perceptrons, established the thesis that the larger the perceptron, the less knowledge it needs to gather in order to recognize geometric shapes. Rosenblatt’s rule goes: “An infinitely large perceptron does not need to learn anything, because it knows everything right away”.

(PAD, p. 139)

What Lem calls Rosenblatt’s rule and the perceptron, both from the LRW, merit a brief elaboration. The perceptron, as Simon Haykin wrote, “occupies a special place in the historical development of neural networks: it was the first algorithmically described neural network. Its invention by Rosenblatt, a psychologist, inspired engineers, physicists, and mathematicians alike to devote their research effort to different aspects of neural networks in the 1960s and the 1970s. Moreover, it is truly remarkable to find that the perceptron […] is as valid today as it was in 1958 when Rosenblatt’s paper on the perceptron was first published” (Haykin 2009, p. 47; see also: Rosenblatt 1957, 1958a, 1958b, 1962). Rosenblatt’s starting point was a premise that the human brain’s ability to organise the sensory world (light, sound, temperature, etc.) is not innate but is acquired by the perceptual system. The same applies to the recognition of shapes, sounds, etc. Hence the idea of building a physical system capable of learning to perceive, that is, “of a physical system which can recognize “similarities” in our complex environment, where countless demands are made on all of our senses, and which tends, spontaneously, to form meaningful classifications of stimuli in such an environment” (Rosenblatt 1958a, p. 2).

Rosenblatt proposed a mathematical, probabilistic theory of such a system, which effectively turns out to be an elementary neural network, and constructed such circuits. The first results were promising, prompting him to write that as the complexity of a perceptron increases, “the probabilities of correct performance approach unity”. But what is more, “with an amazingly small number of units—in contrast with the human brain’s 10¹⁰ nerve cells—the perceptron is capable of highly sophisticated activity” (Rosenblatt 1958a, p. 2). Simon Haykin puts it in a more technical way:

The perceptron is the simplest form of a neural network used for the classification of patterns said to be linearly separable (i.e., patterns that lie on opposite sides of a hyperplane). Basically, it consists of a single neuron with adjustable synaptic weights and bias. The algorithm used to adjust the free parameters of this neural network first appeared in a learning procedure developed by Rosenblatt […] for his perceptron brain model. Indeed, Rosenblatt proved that if the patterns (vectors) used to train the perceptron are drawn from two linearly separable classes, then the perceptron algorithm converges and positions the decision surface in the form of a hyperplane between the two classes. The proof of convergence of the algorithm is known as the perceptron convergence theorem.

(Haykin 2009, p. 48)

Rosenblatt was a visionary. In 1958 he wrote “Stories about the creation of machines having human qualities have long been a fascinating province in the realm of science fiction. Yet we are about to witness the birth of such a machine—a machine capable of perceiving, recognising and identifying its surroundings without any human training or control” (Rosenblatt 1958a, p. 1). Rosenblatt’s perceptron is now considered a part of the genealogy of artificial intelligence and of deep learning. It will not be out of place to mention that Rosenblatt’s results were for a time considered unpromising and based on insufficiently valid premises. Only recently have they been given enough credit to be considered relevant and significant for the development of artificial intelligence (see Negnevitsky 1997; Tappert 2019).

Professor Dońda, effectively interpreting Rosenblatt’s rule or precisely, Rosenblatt’s perceptron principle, drew the consequences, focusing not so much on the hardware (perceptron) but on the software:

Whatever a small computer can do with a large program, perhaps a large computer can do just as much with a small program; hence the logical conclusion that an infinitely large program can work on its own, i.e., without any computer at all.

(PAD, p. 139; Lem 2020a, p. 353)

Dońda’s law belongs to the DTW, but the points of contact with Rosenblatt’s achievements (LRW) are quite clear and evident. For Dońda, this law is the starting point. He goes beyond it and asks “What does it mean when we say that an infinitely large amount of information can take effect directly, without the help of any equipment?” (PAD, p. 147). The answer lies in the MEIE Principle. In fact, “Matter and energy possess mass. It’s also true that information is neither matter nor energy, and yet it exists. And so it should have mass” (PAD, p. 147). Consequently, an infinite amount of information will manifest itself directly, instantly. In what way? In this intuition, the hermeneutic significance of the Danda law finds its expression. Two different situations must be considered: an infinite quantity of information and a finite quantity of information, both of which are discussed by Dońda. The former brings us to theological issues, and we will see it later. The second brings us to the equivalent formula for information in terms of mass/energy and to the concept of the critical density of information. Both situations will now be the subject of discussion in the DTW.

To find the equivalent formula for information in terms of mass/energy means to answer the question “how much the […] information weighs”, “any information, any at all. The content is of no significance at all. Atoms are just the same, whether they’re in stone or in my head”, as Professor Dońda explains it (PAD, p. 148). Having this in mind and wanting to establish the value of information-masa equivalence, Professor Dońda set up a program to load into a memory the latest IBM optical computer “all the curses, magical charms, sorcerer’s spells, incantations, and shamanic formulae that mankind had ever created” (PAD, p. 145). Dońda could not refer to the other contents, because otherwise it would not have obtained an 11 million dollar grant for the IBM computer from Lumila University.

It took more than two years to load the world’s heritage of magic spells and formulas into the computer’s memory. But the result was astonishing. After inserting “four hundred and ninety billion bytes of magic in the memory banks, which in svarnetic terms was equal to twenty tera-giga-magi-bytes”, “a particularly sensitive scale imported from Switzerland” registered an increase in mass of the IBM computer of one hundredth of a gram (PAD, pp. 146–47).

But what is the exact value of equivalence Professor Dońda was looking for? The point is that the number of bites indicated above does not permit arriving at the unique value. Dońda mentions two quantities of bites of information memorised in the IBM machine: “four hundred and ninety billion bytes of magic”, and “twenty tera-giga-magi-bytes” (in svarnetic terms—PAD, p. 146).

The point is that in the Polish version, Dońda does not distinguish clearly between bits and bytes (Lem 2020a, p. 363). In the English version instead, one can read bytes11. In addition, Dońda does not say anything about the difference between the number of “bytes of magic” and its Svarnetics equivalent. Be that as it may and assuming that in both cases bytes are used as the unit of measurement of the amount of information, we obtain two values of the quantity of information stored: 3.9·10¹² bits and 1.6·10¹⁰⁷ bits, correspondingly. Considering that the measured increase in the mass of the computer is equal to 0.01 g (10⁻⁵ kg), for the mass of a bit one obtains the values, respectively, of 2.5·10⁻¹⁸ kg and 6.5·10⁻¹¹³ kg.

As can be seen, the results are inconsistent, to say the least. Since uncertainty persists in these cases as to the nature of the bits (or bytes) used (magic? svarnetics?), there is no choice but to disregard these values. Fortunately, Prof. Dońda offers two other possibilities for tracing the value in question. In fact, describing the process of reprocessing the input data performed by the IBM computer, he says that “bytes. Performing eighteen million operations per second, the machine worked for three months without stopping” (PAD, p. 146). It amounts to 1.4·10¹⁴ bits processed, and consequently, the value of the mass of one bit appears to be of 7.1·10⁻¹⁵ kg.

However, the best estimate seems to be the one provided by Professor Dońda with reference to the mass of a proton, i.e., with reference to the values corresponding to LRM. Professor Dońda himself considered this value the best one: “It takes a hundred billion of them to make a single proton” (PAD, p. 156). Given that the mass of a proton is equal to 1.7·10⁻²⁷ kg, the mass of a bite turns out to be 4.7·10⁻³⁸ kg12.

However, this perspective does not encompass the full complexity of the DTW. In fact, Professor Dońda hypothesised not only the MEIE Principle but also the existence of a critical information density. He asserts that, in the DTW, just as there is a critical density of uranium, there is also a critical density of information. Dońda uses an analogy to explain the concept:

What matters is not the amount, but the density of information. It’s like with uranium. This is no random analogy! Rarefied uranium—in rocks, in soil, is harmless. The condition for an explosion is isolation and concentration. It’s the same here. The information contained in books or in heads may be considerable, but it remains passive. Like scattered particles of uranium. It has to be concentrated! […] Above the critical point, a chain reaction kicks off. […] And here we have Dońda’s barrier, the limit for the accretion of knowledge… That is, you could keep amassing it, but only in a rarefied form.

(PAD, pp. 149–50)

But when information is concentrated, for example, in “the memory banks and computers; wherever the density exceeds a million bytes per cubic inch, an equivalent number of protons will arise”, a chain reaction will be triggered. It will “run around the world at the speed of light, devastating all information stored in the memory banks and computers” (PAD, p. 149). Using the language of Karl Popper (in the LRM) one can perhaps say that in the event foreseen by Dońda and described in PAD, part of World 3 digitalised in the various servers disappears13.

What is the value of critical information density? Dońda indicates, as a reference, the value one million bytes on the cubic millimetre (Lem 2020a, p. 367), that is 3.8·10⁻²¹ kg/m³. For ²³⁵U, the critical mass and critical radius are, respectively, 46 kg and 8.4 cm (Reed 2015, p. 56; see also Chyba and Milne 2014). These values lead to the critical density of ²³⁵U equal to 1.1·10⁻¹ kg/m³.

As already mentioned, in the DRT, the critical information density is surpassed, and the end of civilisation occurs as described above, leading to the birth of a Cosmoslet. From PAD a coherent theory of the creation of the DTW emerges. It can be described as follows. Professor Dońda, commenting on this event, emphasised that his discovery is rooted in physics and belongs to physics. The crucial concept in this theory is a “critical mass” of information notion, akin to the critical mass of uranium. Consequently, every civilisation that is developing computers is approaching it. In summary, the progression of cybernetics represents a trap set for reason by nature (see: PAD, p. 148). If this is the case, it becomes possible to provide an answer to the question of how the universe came into being, an answer grounded in physics and informatics. The universe was created explosively, according to Dońda. What exploded? What suddenly materialised?—The Cosmos emerged from information! Whose information? It was another, more advanced and ancient civilisation, or perhaps a group of civilisations, that we can account for the creation of the DRW. (see PAD, pp. 149–51).

The LRW is quite distant from the information critical density with respect to the DTW. Given that the global data volume would amount to 181 zettabytes (1.5·10²⁴ bits) by the end of 2025 and considering the volume of the entire Earth, one obtains for the actual density of bites per cubic meter 6.6·10⁻³⁵ kg/m³. It seems that humanity still has a certain margin of “storage”, which makes the future digital expansion feasible. For how long? It is estimated that the volume of data stored globally is doubling approximately every four years (Bartley 2024). A simple modelling of the growth based on an exponential function with the base of two gives 183 years until humankind will reach the critical density of information, should Dońda’s physics and informatics theory of creation be valid in the LRW.

The investigations conducted thus far raise the question of whether Dońda’s theory—and more specifically the principle of information-mass equivalence—can be related to any feasible theoretical framework and concepts within the LRW. It encourages exploration into theoretical notions or principles that are at least analogous between the DTW and the LRW, specifically concerning the mass of information.

5. LRW Physics: The MEIE Principle and Digital Catastrophe

The question of whether information has mass has been addressed by many scholars in the LRW. The first to pose a formula was Luis Herrera in 2014 (Herrera 2014, 2020, and references therein). Herrera’s formula is a straightforward application of what is known as the Landauer principle14. Five years later, using the same Landauer formula, Melvin M. Vopson has formulated a new principle of mass-energy-information equivalence, “proposing that a bit of information is not just physical, as already demonstrated, but it has a finite and quantifiable mass while it stores information” (Vopson 2019, p. 1).

The initial point of reference is Shannon’s mathematical formulation regarding the quantity of information obtained through the observation of the occurrence of an event (Shannon 1948). Shannon’s axiomatic theory posits that the information derived from observing an event is a function of the event’s probability of occurrence or non-occurrence. The theory does not make reference to any specific attributes of the event, the observer, or the method of observation. These characteristics allowed for the introduction of an entropy concept associated with the information-bearing states, drawing upon Boltzmann’s thermodynamic entropy. In the realm of digital information, there exist two distinct possible events/states. Any computational process involved in creating digital information relies on various forms of physical processes. Consequently, it can be inferred that there is a direct relationship between the processes of creating, manipulating, or deleting information and thermodynamics. Landauer (1961) was the first to establish a connection between thermodynamics and information theory. He argued that the logical irreversibility of a computational process—such as the operation of “erasing” data on a memory device—implies a physical irreversibility. As a result, the act of creating information necessitates a specific amount of externally applied work to alter the physical system to generate a bit of information, whereas the process of erasing a bit of information produces a defined amount of heat energy that is released into the environment, as requested by the second law of thermodynamics. This assertion, as noted by Vopson, has been previously determined and corroborated through experimental validation (Vopson 2019, p. 2). Considering now the entropy of the storing system as a whole, “for one bit of information lost irreversibly, […] the entropy of the system must increase with an absolute value of heat Q released per bit lost, ΔQ = k_b⋅T⋅ln(2)”, where k_b is the Boltzmann constant and T is temperature (Vopson 2019, p. 2). Following that line of reasoning, Vopson argues that the retention of information indefinitely without energy dissipation can be understood by the fact that once a bit of information is generated, it gains a finite mass, referred to as m_bit. In strict terms, this corresponds to the equivalent mass of the specific amount of heat (energy) released into the environment during the process of reducing information entropy when a bit of information is erased. Vopson (2019) connects then Landauer’s principle with Einstein’s mass–energy equivalence principle (E = m∙c²), arriving at what he calls Landauer’s extended principle, which can be considered the MEIE Principle: “The process of holding information indefinitely without energy dissipation can be explained by the fact that once a bit of information is created, it acquires a finite mass, m_bit”, a mass which is equal to

$$m_{bit}={\displaystyle \frac{k_b·T·ln\left(2\right)}{c^2}}$$

where c is the speed of light (Vopson 2019, p. 3). At room temperature (T = 300K), the mass of a bit of information is approximately 3.19∙10⁻³⁸ kg, which is almost the same value as that suggested by Prof. Dońda.

Vopson also proposed three experiments to measure m_bit. The first experiment is virtually identical to the one carried out by Professor Dońda in DTW and “consists of an ultra-accurate mass measurement of a digital data storage device, when all its memory bits are in fully erased state. This is then followed by the operation of recording digital data on all of its memory bits until is at full capacity, followed by another accurate mass measurement” (Vopson 2019, p. 3). As what is to be measured is the mass difference, Vopson suggested also using a very sensitive interferometer like the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). The third experiment was proposed in the context of what Vopson called the two information conjectures15 and refers to a matter–antimatter annihilation process, in which a positron–electron annihilation is expected to produce “two IR photons of ~50 μm wavelength due to information erasure, which should be detected simultaneously with the two 511 keV gamma photons emerging due to the energy conversion of the rest masses of the annihilating particles” (Vopson 2022, pp. 5–6).

In this context, it is also worth mentioning Laszlo Kish’s attempts to measure a mass of one bit in 2007. Kish attempted to detect a change in the mass of a device during data transfer. Experiments were devised to compare the weight of information storage media before and after recording/erasure. However, the results achieved, which were discussed extensively by Kish, cannot be considered conclusive due to the influence of various external factors, such as an elevated temperature of the storage medium after recording/erasure, which could cause a lifting force due to heat convection flow (see Kish 2007; Kish and Granqvist 2013).

What then would be the status of the MEIE Principle in the physics of the LRW? Indeed, the principle can be regarded as a hypothesis that has yet to be tested both experimentally (as indicated above) and theoretically. Certainly, this hypothesis seems to be well grounded in the body of well-recognised scientific theories and offers interesting insights into possible explanations of currently debated issues (e.g., the problem of the missing dark matter in the visible universe; see Vopson 2019, p. 4). Nevertheless, it should be stressed that Landauer’s principle is questionable, and nature and interpretation are not yet clear (Bormashenko 2019; Menin 2023; Oriols and Nikolić 2023). The same goes for the very question of the mass of a bit of information. Indeed, some physicists argue that one should not confuse the hypothetical mass that represents a bit of information and the mass that is a carrier of information, as it seems to be the case in some approaches. In fact, as Burgin and Mikkilineni state “Information is not physical by itself, although it can have physical and/or mental representations. Consequently, a bit of information does not have mass, but the physical structure that represents the bit indeed has mass. Moreover, the same bit can have multiple representations in the form of a physical substance (e.g., a symbol on a paper or a state of a flip-flop circuit or an electrical voltage or current pulse.) Naturally, these different physical representations can have different masses, although the information is the same” (Burgin and Mikkilineni 2022, p. 1; see also Witkowski et al. 2024). In addition, it is important to emphasise that—as suggested by investigations conducted by Kish and Granqvist (2013)—the issue of minimum mass related to a bit of information yields various responses that are contingent upon the physical situation in which one posits the question, and at times, the mass can even be considered negative.

To conclude this comparison between physics in LRW and DTW, reference should be made to a digital catastrophe scenario described by Vopson (2020). Considering the two informatic conjectures, in conjunction with estimates of the annual growth in the amount of information produced equating to 1%, he hypothesises that in approximately 6000 years, there will be more bits of information than the number of atoms on the globe. The point Vopson makes is that, if “the size of an atom is ~10⁻¹⁰ m, while the linear size of a bit of information today is 25∙10⁻⁹ m corresponding to about 25 nm² area per bit at data storage densities exceeding 1 Tb/in². Even assuming that future technological progress brings the bit size down to sizes closer to the atom itself, this volume of digital information will take up more than the size of the planet, leading to what we define as the information catastrophe” (Vopson 2020). This will result in evident difficulties with regard to the processing and storage of data, as well as significant energy and climate problems. In fact, the management of the exponentially increasing volume of data necessitates the use of valuable resources, resulting in large amounts of energy consumption, thereby generating considerable amounts of toxic e-waste. Furthermore, it is important to stress the cultural significance of these digital and informational dynamics. As noted by C. Elgin, “too much information occludes patterns that figure in an understanding of the phenomena” (Elgin 2022, p. 9). This phenomenon, often referred to as informational overload, complicates not only the understanding of phenomena and processes but also the ability to make informed decisions. Such an issue may have an overwhelming impact on various areas of human life. For that reason, it requires an interdisciplinary approach, spanning various management disciplines, such as organisation science, accounting, and marketing, as well as fields like economics, law, psychology, and library sciences, as pointed out more than two decades ago (Eppler and Mengis 2004). It is important to note that this phenomenon is distinct from Dońda’s barrier. In the PAD scenario, Professor Dońda highlights how the excessive growth of information is a trap for civilisations that are not sufficiently vigilant about the accumulation of data. But, as far as the LRW is concerned, it can also be an opportunity. For example, by entrusting data management to artificial intelligence, it becomes possible to gain more time for reflection, to better understand the processes at work and to create innovative ways of managing and using data (i.e., in the teaching context, see Johnson 2024). Equally interesting would be a closer sociological examination of the fate of civilisations that have failed to escape the trap identified in Professor Dońda’s theory.

To recapitulate the comparison between physics in LRW and DTW, the fundamental divergence between the two theories is rooted in their respective assumptions regarding the growth of information. While Vopson’s theory postulates that there is an increase in the quantity of information with reference to the physical possibilities of its storage and with no limitations, Dońda articulates a theory concerning the creation of the universe, which is based on the density of bits produced and stored within a computer memory. This necessitates an investigation into how to comprehend PAD in the context of this difference, which does not solely pertain to the fourth beauty as defined by Csicsery-Ronay (imaginary science). It is specifically the theory of the creation of the universe developed by Professor Dońda that offers a critical framework for interpreting the novella. To clarify this, a word of introduction to the question of God in The Star Diaries, to essential traits of Lem’s theory of literary work and to the notion of the thought experiment, is in order.

6. General Remarks on the Notion of God in The Star Diaries, Lem’s Theory of Literature, and on Thought Experiments

6.1. On the Notion of God in ‘The Star Diaries’

Professor Dońda, who has never offered a satisfactory explanation for this claim, does not subscribe to the idea of the current universe, or for that matter, any other universe, being created by a divine being. He stresses that the creation of the universe from information is fully coherent with his law; however, it cannot be definitively proven that what exists actually came into being in that manner, i.e., from pre-existing information “created” or “stored” by other civilisations in a sort of infinite chain of creation events that align with Dońda’s law.

Nevertheless, Dońda’s personal option is understandable in light of the concept of God and creation present in some of Lem’s works, particularly in The Star Diaries. In order to facilitate comprehension, the notion of god as a creator will be considered. In several of his literary contributions, Lem depicts the genesis of universes and novel creatures. It is sufficient to consult Ijon Tichy’s recollections of his encounter with Professor Corcoran, who recounts his experiments with the creation of artificial worlds (in PAD, pp. 33–45), with Professor of comparative ontogenetics Decantor (PAD, pp. 46–56) or the account of Klapaucius’s experiments with microminiaturised civilisations (Lem 1973, pp. 19–29). Nevertheless, in such circumstances, a creating “divine entity” maintains a relationship with its own creations, albeit one that is constrained by the limitations inherent in those creations. On occasion, this dynamic can become unmanageable. In this sense, the god-creator in question is not omnipotent and is not transcendent at all. Consequently, this comprehension of a “divine” entity that is responsible for the creation of universes should properly be classified as a defective god model (Kochanowski 2020). It is quite evident that, in lieu of a deity, it would be more appropriate to write of beings that have attained such a level of development in science and technology that renders it feasible for them to create other beings and universes. This capacity, it could be argued, could once be within the grasp of humankind.

However, Lem also presents the concept of a god creator who is a perfect mystery, absolutely inexpressible, and concerning whom nothing can be said. It is erroneous to subscribe to this belief system in terms of purpose, gratitude, or meditation. This approach avoids all forms of speculation, instead aiming to establish a foundation of unadulterated faith. In the 21st journey, Ijon Tichy visits the planet Dichotica (Lem 1976, pp. 210–73). The account of the journey represents a genuine theological discourse on the notions of god, faith, and creation. In the course of a deliberation on the topic, Father Memnar, an adherent of Duism16, in response to Tichy’s enquiry regarding the essence of faith, asserts the following:

You asked of its nature. It is—one might say—completely naked, this faith of ours, and completely defenseless. We entertain no hopes, make no demands, requests, we count on nothing, we only believe. […] If someone believes for certain reasons and on certain grounds, his faith loses its full sovereignty; that two and two are four I know right well and therefore need not have faith in it. But of God I know nothing, and therefore can only have faith. What does this faith give me? By the ancient reckoning, not a blessed thing. […] Which means it serves no end. We cannot even declare that this is the reason we believe, because such faith reduces to absurdity: he who would speak thus is in effect claiming to know the difference—permanently —between the absurd and the not absurd, and has himself chosen the absurd because, according to him, that is the side on which God stands. We do not argue thus. Our act of faith is neither supplicating nor thankful, neither humble nor defiant, it simply if, and there is nothing more that can be said about it.

(Lem 1976, p. 240)

Indeed, within the framework of the Duistic religion, the notion of god is portrayed as an “abyss of mystery”, to such an extent that the very existence of the divine is not amenable to definitive proof (Lem 1976, p. 265). This situation reflects the dogma of the necessary fallibility of all theories regarding faith, whether in relation to the nature and existence of god or to the creation. The aforementioned dogma is articulated as follows: “Nothing which can be articulated Here has any bearing on what abides There” (Lem 1976, p. 267). It is evident that this conception of God does not align with the Judeo-Christian tradition. It is possible that the latter idea may be positioned between the notion of a defective god and the god of Duistic religion. Indeed, the Judeo-Christian tradition speaks of a transcendent God who creates all that exists ex nihilo, out of love, revealing Himself to humanity and offering them salvation and the covenant (e.g., see Chao 2020, for a brilliant and witty presentation of God in the Judeo-Christian tradition; see: Lem 1976, pp. 267–68). This God can also be the creator of a world that exists eternally, as Thomas Aquinas explained in his treatise De aeternitate mundi contra murmurantes (see Pabjan 2020).

Even though Professor Dońda more than once makes explicit references to Christian theology (Manichaeism, the Prologue of the Gospel according to John), his approach to the question of creation seems to be purely Duistic. Considering the interpretation of the concept of god within the framework of Duistic religion, it becomes evident that regarding creation, only a defective deity is a plausible option, indicating a creation by other, sophisticated civilizations. In fact, if the Duistic faith were to be firmly established, conceptualising god as a creator of universes in accordance with Donda’s principles would make god more intelligible. However, in such a scenario, he inherently becomes defective, as he would be viewed as engaging with the created universe and, consequently, subjected to human comprehension. In conclusion, Professor Dońda’s theory reconceptualises the origin of the universe within the domain of physical laws. This mode of narration is, in fact, a distinctive feature of literary work, according to Lem.

6.2. General Remarks on Lem’s Theory of Literature

Stanisław Lem develops his vision of the literary work in The Philosophy of Chance (Lem 2014)17. Lem’s conception of a literary work takes into account not only the capacity of the literary work to inspire thought but also its mode of construction, that is, the procedures and reasoning underlying its formation, which, according to Lem, are derived from science. Lem seems to support the idea that it is possible to extrapolate “a method that has been tried with success in mathematics, linguistics, anthropology, medicine, biology, technology and physics” and to transfer this method “into the realm of literary studies in the hope that it will help us explain its dark and antinomic problems” (Lem 2014, p. 28). As to what this method entails for the conceptualisation of a literary work, Lem answers this question in the Chapter VI of The Philosophy of Chance, titled “The work: A logical and empirical approach”, where the author of Solaris proposes the following:

[A]ll literary works should be considered as a certain kind of definition, namely as nominal definitions that project or create (in the logical sense) such empty names (i.e., without designators), which are the titles of these works. Since the scope of any empty name is its denotation, therefore an empty name denotes an empty set. Nevertheless, logical judgments either true or false can be made about certain empty names, although not all of them. […] By the same token, ex ipsa ea definitione everything that the work proclaims is logically true, however it concerns the empty name. It is because definition is nominal, that is, it concerns the connotation of an expression in language, not its denotation in real being.

(Lem 2014, pp. 107–8; Lem’s emphasis)

Consequently, the relation of a literary work to reality is analogous to the relation of mathematics to reality. While mathematicians construct “models”, they do not know exactly what these models represent. Each model starts from certain assumptions and progresses as an outcome of permissible transformations characterised by complex internal relations between its elements but without precisely determinable external relations to the LRW. By analogy, it can be argued that the writer also creates “models” without knowing, or needing to know, the models of what they produce. The resulting literary work is characterised by internal relations, while its attribution to the LRW remains only a potential. It is the act of reading, whether by a common reader or a professional literary critic, that establishes a set of “semantic addresses” or relations between literary and extra-literary reality.

In keeping with this understanding, Lem resolves the question of what constitutes a literary work by using a formula inspired by the procedures of logic: “literary work = nominal definition of the empty name indicated by the title” (see Lem 2014, p. 107). Here, it is clear that Lem is translating an otherwise difficult, complex and long-debated issue surrounding the definition of a literary work into a logic-based formula that allows the definition to be generalised. Many, if not all, of Lem’s works, PAD included, are but translations of different philosophical or theological issues, problems and situations pertaining to everyday life into the language of mathematics, logic, informatics, physics, biology, and linguistics—in short, into the language of science.

The novella PAD serves as an exemplary illustration of Stanisław Lem’s perspective on a literary work functioning as a strategy of translation. By imposing the narrative framework of a Gulliveresque voyage featuring Ijon Tichy in Africa, Lem proposes the translation of the dilemma of creation into both theological and scientific discourses. As for the scientific aspects, these have previously been outlined; as for the theological aspects, Lem seems to be posing the question of the existence of God and precisely if man were to discover the real mechanism of the creation of the world, could the existence or non-existence of God be unambiguously deduced from the understanding of the mechanism of creation? As it has been said, the translation takes the form of thought experiment. It is therefore important to establish what form this thought experiment takes.

6.3. General Remarks on Thought Experiments

The thought experiment proposed by Stanisław Lem could be classified as a thought experiment in theology proposed within the science fiction narration18. In their recent paper dedicated to thought experiments in systematic theology, Agerbo Mørch and Søvik (2024a, 2024b) suggest that the thought experiments are best understood in the light of coherence theory. There are three aspects of coherence: consistency, cohesiveness, and comprehensiveness. Consistency means that the elements of a theory cannot contradict each other. Comprehensiveness means that the theory can explain more data in a more consistent way. Finally, a good theory must be connected and not just be made up of parts that do not contradict each other (Agerbo Mørch and Søvik 2024b, p. 90). Both LRW and DTW are coherent in this way, but the investigation of coherence in detail is not the focus of the thought experiment developed in PAD. In other words, the argumentative role of Lem’s thought experiment is not to show “the presence or absence of consistency, cohesiveness, and comprehensiveness” (Agerbo Mørch and Søvik 2024a, p. 2).

The approach adopted by (Buzzoni 2025; see also: Buzzoni and Savojardo 2019) is more aligned with the thought experiment, which is advanced in PAD. Buzzoni differentiates between empirical-scientific and fictional thought experiments. The subsequent definition pertains to the latter category: “fictional thought experiments (and more generally all artistic fictions) first of all transport us into a purely hypothetical-counterfactual dimension, but then, unlike science, the particular contents they propose (the concatenations of images, the stories they tell, etc.). are not transformed into experimental apparatuses that are in principle technically functioning, but into artefacts that […] floating in the pure hypotheticity of the mind […] find a correspondence with some of our teleological needs or, more simply, always have some ethical-existential relevance for us, because they are always ultimately connected to the question […] about the meaning of our lives” (Buzzoni 2025, pp. 13–14). Two aspects evoked by Buzzoni appear to be of particular significance for a proper interpretation of Lem’s thought experiment: a “hypothetical-counterfactual dimension” and an “ethical-existential relevance for us”. Consequently, Lem’s thought experiment can be labelled a fictional thought experiment, but something is still missing.

As previously stated, both LRW and DTW are almost indistinguishable from each other, with the exception of a single detail: the mechanism of creation that was discovered, described, and actually occurred in DTW. This enables the identification of two elements that are lacking in a complete interpretation of Lem’s thought experiment: the fact that the thought experiment in question is proposed within a fiction that represents a narrative model of a world and the recognition that there are, in fact, two models of the genre, essentially identical except for one detail, that are being compared. It therefore appears that Lem’s thought experiment has the following distinctive features: the thought experiment is acted out within an existentially relevant confrontation between narrative models of the two almost identical worlds, one of which is distinguished from the other by its hypothetical–counterfactual dimension.

A similar use of thought experiments has been unveiled by Menachem Fisch in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, particularly in the narration of the third voyage to the island of Lilliput (Fisch 2019). This use of thought experiments, or in Fisch’s words, of similar counterfactual scenarios, is the keystone of Fisch’s interpretation of Swift’s book.

The starting point of Fisch is the affirmation that “new knowledge and new challenges to accepted truths are arrived at by radically changing one’s perspective. However, because it is impossible to genuinely change one’s perspective at will, the required change of perspective is accomplished by leaving oneself intact, as it were, while imaginatively changing reality itself!” (Fisch 2019, pp. 4–5). For that reason, everything is contracted to a twelfth in Lilliput, and for the same reason, in the DTW, the mechanism of creation is known. Apart from this detail, everything else remains virtually unchanged. Therein lies the strength of the counterfactual scenario, because the difference creates distance between LRW and DTW, making it possible to observe them in a new way in the search for the answer to the issue under consideration. As Fisch puts it, “this can only be achieved, as in real experiments, by witnessing a played out scenario, which, since imagined, must take the form of a narrative narrated by a trustworthy observer like Gulliver [in the PAD case, an observer like Ijon Tichy], who stands in for us” (Fisch 2019, p. 5).

Consequently, as Fisch rightly states with reference to that kind of thought experiment, “for a thought experiment to be effective, its counterfactual component must be allowed to divert from reality significantly enough to make a real difference but to remain close enough for the perspective it challenges to remain relevant” (Fisch 2019, p. 6). In addition, it is important to note that this “self-distancing or self-alienation […] cannot be achieved merely by looking hard at or thinking hard about our world and ourselves (Fisch 2019, p. 7) or by “collecting and formalising empirical data”, as they are “powerless to challenge and change the framework assumptions by which we amass and interpret them” (Fisch 2019, p. 5)19. This is precisely how Lem’s thought experiment is constructed. The subsequent section will present the findings and the detailed scheme of Lem’s thought experiment. However, prior to this, it would be worthwhile to give a brief consideration of this type of thought experiment, setting them in a broader context of mental models and forms of reasoning.

Yiftach Fehige, in his very comprehensive presentation of the history and types of mental experiments, describing the approach of Nancey Nersessian and Nenad Miščević writes the following: “similar to physical models, thought experiments are performed on mental models. […] When we conduct a thought experiment, we set up a mental model in our minds first, and then all the experimental operations are performed on that model. The narrative that helps to set up the mental model is not the thought experiment. The narrative of thought experiments functions a bit like a user manual to set up the experiment” (Fehige 2024, p. 88).

Mental models are constructs of the human mind that represent situations, events, and processes to solve certain problems. Nersessian defines mental models as “structural, behavioural, or functional analog representation of a real-world or imaginary situation, event or process. It is analog in that it preserves constraints inherent in what is represented” (Nersessian 2008, p. 93). These models can be manipulated, transformed, and dynamically developed through the application of a variety of reasoning processes to systems of propositions, including deduction, induction, and abduction. However, it is important to note that there is no strict equivalence between reasoning and logic. In the case of mental models, inferences are made through the construction and manipulation of models that are similar in structural, behavioural, and functional terms to the phenomenon under study (Nersessian 2008, pp. 11, 184).

A thought experiment is cited as one of the examples of this type of “manipulation” understood as a form of reasoning, called by Nancy Nersessian a “simulative model-based reasoning” (Nersessian 1993, p. 291; see also Nersessian 2017, p. 370). In certain instances, the crux of the issue may pertain to the cognitive framework underpinning counterfactual reasoning, encompassing the potentialities that could have occurred. In other instances, particularly complex thought experiments may be pertinent, for example, to alternative models that describe a specific situation in the real world, as appears to be the case in Lem’s novella under consideration20. Finally, in the context of this essay, it will not be out of place to point out that some scholars interpret the narrative in terms of mental models and mental experiments (Nersessian 1993, pp. 293–95; Elgin 2014, 2017, pp. 221–47).

7. Conclusions: God and the Creation of the Universe—PAD as a Thought Experiment in Theology

The theory of creation conceived and confirmed by facts in DTW indisputably belongs to physics (PAD, p. 151). In essence, the theory is extremely simple: “Above the critical point, a chain reaction kicks off. Obiit animus, natus est atomus! The information disappears, because it changes into matter” (PAD, p. 149). The underlying “mechanism” is the MEIE Principle. One could therefore speak of the “physics of creation” in DTW. But where is theology here?

The correlation is twofold. Firstly, Dońda employs the phrasing of the Gospel of John (John 1:14) when discussing his theory. The professor elucidates that the word became flesh, exploding into galaxies and giving rise to the cosmos from information. This is not a mere rhetorical device employed to depict an otherwise natural process, but rather an idea that served as the catalyst for Dońda’s research endeavours: “It was necessary to start from the idea that the word can become flesh, that a magic spell can materialize—it was necessary to dive into this absurdity, to enter proscribed connections in order to get to the other side, where the equivalence of information and mass is already something obvious” (PAD, p. 151).

None of this is yet the focus of the thought experiment implemented in PAD. Professor Dońda, in fact, refers to God’s creation of the world by explaining it according to his theory. In short, God may have created the world through the same physical mechanism that the professor discovered. This leads him to the divine recipe for creation: “Here’s God’s recipe: count down from infinity to zero. When He reached it, information materialized, explosively—true to the formula of equivalence. So the word became flesh, by exploding into nebulae, stars… the Cosmos came into being out of information!” (PAD, p. 150)21.

However, even if Dońda succeeds in explaining the divine “Let there be” from the Book of Genesis (Gen 1:1–26; cf. Ps 33:6), it should be noted that this is not the sole explanation, despite the unambiguity of the creation mechanism. Notwithstanding the fact that, according to Dońda’s law, the cosmos of DTW arises from information, the hypothesis that God is its creator cannot be considered proven. In fact, the professor advances an alternative hypothesis—namely the possibility of the action of other civilizations. Indeed, at the novella’s pivotal point, Dońda refers to God’s recipe and says, “the Cosmos came into being out of information! […] It’s impossible to prove, but it is in keeping with Dońda’s law. No, I don’t think it was God. But someone did it in the previous phase—maybe it was a group of civilizations that exploded all at once, just as a cluster of supernovas sometimes explodes” (PAD, p. 150).

Consequently, in both DTW and LRM, the question of whether God created the world has the same ambiguous answer. Leszek Kolakowski wrote about philosophy—and I would assert this perspective extends to literature—that of

the questions which have sustained European philosophy for two and a half millennia, not a single one has been answered to general satisfaction. All of them, if not declared invalid by the decree of philosophers, remain controversial. It is just as possible, culturally and intellectually, to be a nominalist or an anti-nominalist today as it was in the twelfth century. […] Belief and non-belief in God are equally respectable. […] In the things that matter in philosophy—those things, in other words, which make philosophy matter in life—the available options have remained unchanged since that unidentifiable moment when independent thought arose and myth ceased to be regarded as a source of authority. The vocabulary and the forms of expression have changed, the great minds which every century occasionally produces have shifted our way of looking at certain things, but the kernel which keeps philosophy alive remains unaltered.

(Kołakowski 2001, pp. 1–2)

As previously stated, the result of Lem’s thought experiment appears to substantiate the unresolvability of the question concerning the divine creation of the world, even within contexts where the laws of creation, or indeed of all physics, are known. In short, physics is not enough to account for metaphysics, let alone theology (though that would be an issue for another paper). Nevertheless, in my view it is a remarkably encouraging result. Indeed, Lem’s conclusion serves to affirm the existence of those questions that sustain philosophy and literature, while at the same time affirming a conjecture put forward by Georg Steiner, the author of Real Presences. Steiner, in response to Nietzsche’s assertion that God “is a phantom, fossil embedded in the childhood of rational speech”, writes the following: “‘God’ is, not because our grammar is outworn”; rather, it is grammar that “lives and generates worlds because there is the wager on God” (Steiner 1991, pp. 3–4).