I regard Stanislaw Lem’s short story “A New Cosmogony” as a work of prophecy, a true fiction. The titular cosmogony rests on two elements whose facticity (I am certain) will one day be revealed:
It’s games (and game theory) all the way down and all the way up.
Physical “laws” are no such thing; all is contingent, all is mutable.
Together, these elements constitute something very much like the ludic-gnostic (meta)physics which I outlined in the first installment of Liber Ludens (hence this post). The following excerpt and summary should suffice to illustrate the story’s cosmogony.
The New Cosmogony: a review of a fictional oration by a Nobel Prize laureate, who presents a new model of the universe based on his analysis to the Fermi Paradox: the laws of physics is the result of a game played by the Players, advanced ancient civilizations. The laureate, Alfred Teste, describes how his theory was inspired by an almost-forgotten idea in a little-known volume by Aristedes Acheropoulos.
Excerpt
The isolation of Acheropoulos’s idea is without parallel in the history of thought. The concept of the New Cosmogony breaks with—despite the appearance of plagiarism, of which I spoke—every metaphysical system, as well as with every method of natural science. The impression of having to do with a plagiarism is the fault of the reader, of the reader’s conceptual inertia. For it is purely by reflex that we think of the entire material world as yielding to the following sharp logical dichotomy: either it was created by Someone (and then, standing on the ground of faith, we name that Someone the Absolute, God, the First Cause) or, on the other hand, it was created by no one, which means, as when we deal with the world as scientists, that no one created it. But Acheropoulos says: Tertium datur. The world was created by No One, but all the same it was created; the Universe possesses Makers.
A situation resulted, as peculiar as it was amusing. What a civilization might look like, what it might occupy itself with, what goals it might set itself, when that civilization had been prospering for billions of years (and civilizations “of the first generation” would have to be that much older than Earth’s!)—this was something no one could picture, not even in his wildest dreams. That which was beyond anyone’s ability to imagine, being therefore a thing most inconvenient, was therefore conveniently ignored. In fact, none of those who studied the problem of cosmic psychozoics wrote one word about such long-lived civilizations. The more bold among them sometimes said that the quasars, the pulsars, were perhaps manifestations of the activity of the most powerful cosmic civilizations. Yet simple calculation showed that Earth, if it continued to develop at the present rate, could attain the level of such extreme “astroengineering” activity within the next several thousand years. And after that? What might a civilization that lasted millions of times longer do? The astrophysicists who dealt with such questions declared that such civilizations did nothing, seeing they did not exist. A billion-year-old civilization employs none. Its tools are what we call the Laws of Nature. Physics itself is the ‘machine’ of such civilizations! And it is no ‘ready-made machine,’ nothing of the sort. That ‘machine’ (obviously it has nothing in common with mechanical machines) is billions of years in the making, and its structure, though much advanced, has not yet been finished!
Acheropoulos employs the following visual model. When on an agar medium we place colonies of bacteria, we can at once distinguish between the starting (the “natural”) agar and those colonies. In time, however, the vital processes of the bac- teria change the agar medium, introducing into it certain substances, consuming others, so that the composition of the nutrient material—its acidity, its consistency—undergoes transformations. Now, when as a result of those changes the agar, endowed with new chemisms, causes the rise of new varieties of bacteria, altered quite beyond recognition with respect to the parent generations, these new varieties are nothing more or less than the product of the “biochemical game” that has gone on between all the colonies collectively and the culture medium. The later varieties of bacteria would not have arisen had the earlier ones not changed the environment; hence, the later ones are creations of the game itself. Meanwhile, it is not at all necessary for the individual colonies to be in direct contact with one another; they affect one another, but only through osmosis, diffusion, the displacements in the acid-base equilibrium of the nutrient. As one can see, the original game state has a tendency to disappear, to be supplanted by qualitatively new, initially nonexistent forms of game interaction. For the agar, substitute the Proto- cosmos, and for the bacteria, the Proto-civilizations, and you obtain a simplified view of the New Cosmogony.
These rules, however, did not have to be universal, that is to say, the same everywhere. The Protouniverse could have been heterogeneous physically; it could have represented a sort of miscellany of diverse physics, physics not in every place identical and even not in every place equally rigorous (processes occurring under the sovereignty of a non-rigorous or indefinite physics would not always run the same course, though their initial conditions might be analogous). Acheropoulos posited that the Protouniverse was precisely such a physical “patchwork” and that civilizations were able to arise in it only in a few locations, at a considerable distance from one another. Acheropoulos conceived of the Protouniverse as the physical homologue of a honeycomb; what in the honeycomb are cells would in the Protouniverse be regions of temporarily stabilized physics, with each physics different from the physics of the adjoining regions. Each civilization, developing inside such an the starting conditions for the Psychozoic Cosmogony. This is no easy thing, for, whatever took place, the Civilizations did not emerge unchanged from the work of transforming the Cosmos; being a part of it, they could not touch it without also touching themselves.
Acheropoulos employs the following visual model. When on an agar medium we place colonies of bacteria, we can at once distinguish between the starting (the natural) agar and those colonies. In time, however, the vital processes of the bacteria change the agar medium, introducing into it certain substances, consuming others, so that the composition of the nutrient material—its acidity, its consistency—undergoes transformation. Now, when as a result of those changes the agar, endowed with new chemisms, causes the rise of new varieties of bacteria, altered quite beyond recognition with respect to the parent generations, these new varieties are nothing more or less than the product of the biochemical game that has gone on between all the colonies collectively and the culture medium. The later varieties of bacteria would not have arisen had the earlier ones not changed the environment; hence, the later ones are creations of the game itself. Meanwhile, it is not at all necessary for the individual colonies to be in direct contact with one another; they affect one another, but only through osmosis, diffusion, the displacements in the acid-base equilibrium of the nutrient. As one can see, the original game state has a tendency to disappear, to be supplanted by qualitatively new, initially nonexistent forms of game interaction. For the agar, substitute the Protocosmos, and for the bacteria, the Protocivilizations, and you obtain a simplified view of the New Cosmogony.
What I have said thus far is, from the standpoint of knowledge accumulated historically, totally insane. Nothing, however, is to prevent our conducting thought experiments with the most arbitrary assumptions, provided they be logically consistent. When therefore we agree to the model of the Universe-Game, there arise a series of questions, and to these we must provide consistent answers. They are questions, above all, concerning the initial state: can we infer anything at all about it, can we by inference arrive at the starting conditions of the Game? Acheropoulos believes this to be possible. For the Game to have originated in it, the Protocosmos must have possessed well-defined properties. It must have been such, for example, as to allow the first civilizations to come into existence in it, and therefore it was not a physical chaos, but obeyed certain rules.
These rules, however, did not have to be universal, that is to say, the same everywhere. The Protouniverse could have been heterogeneous physically; it could have represented a sort of miscellany of diverse physics, physics not in every place identical and even not in every place equally rigorous (processes occurring under the sovereignty of a non-rigorous or indefinite physics would not always run the same course, though their initial conditions might be analogous). Acheropoulos posited that the Protouniverse was precisely such a physical patchwork and that civilizations were able to arise in it only in a few locations, at a considerable distance from one another. Acheropoulos conceived of the Protouniverse as the physical homologue of a honeycomb; what in the honeycomb are cells would in the Protouniverse be regions of temporarily stabilized physics, with each physics different from the physics of the adjoining regions.
Summary
In Stanisław Lem’s imaginative short story “A New Cosmogony,” presented as a fictional academic lecture by the invented physicist Alfred Testa, readers encounter a radically novel theory concerning the fundamental nature and origin of the universe. Appearing in Lem’s metafictional collection A Perfect Vacuum (1971), the story is structured as a detailed, critical review of Testa’s purported Nobel Prize lecture. Testa proposes an astonishing paradigm shift: rather than being governed by immutable physical laws originating from a primordial cosmic event, our universe is actually the product of an ongoing strategic interaction—a grand, invisible, and subtle game—among numerous advanced civilizations scattered throughout the cosmos.
According to Testa’s intricate hypothesis, these cosmic Players, immensely sophisticated yet constrained by practical limitations, interact indirectly by manipulating and adjusting local laws of physics, fundamental constants, and cosmological parameters. These changes are made cautiously, as direct communication or overt interference between civilizations remains impossible due to vast cosmic distances and the finite speed of light. Thus, instead of cooperating explicitly, each civilization behaves as a rational game-theoretic actor, carefully choosing strategies designed not necessarily to achieve dominance but primarily to secure stability and survival over immense spans of cosmic time. The consequence of this collective, cautious strategic stance is the establishment of a universal equilibrium resembling what we now perceive as fixed and immutable laws of physics.
Testa meticulously explains certain key observational features of our universe in terms of this game-theoretic equilibrium. For instance, the accelerating expansion of the cosmos is not a mere astronomical curiosity or cosmic accident; rather, it functions as a protective mechanism of "distance isolation," ensuring civilizations remain sufficiently separated to maintain the stability of this delicate equilibrium. Similarly, the fundamental limit imposed by the speed of light is no arbitrary fact but serves as a built-in safeguard, a deliberate barrier that preserves each civilization's autonomy and prevents destabilizing intrusions or excessive influence from external Players. Furthermore, the existence of a clear arrow of time—manifested in thermodynamic irreversibility and causality itself—functions as another essential feature that prevents Players from retroactively altering cosmic conditions, thereby preserving the stability and fairness of the universal equilibrium.
On a philosophical level, Lem’s story challenges deeply entrenched assumptions about reality, especially humanity’s confidence in the eternal immutability of physical laws. Instead, Lem portrays the cosmos as profoundly contingent and subject to continuous intelligent revision—effectively, as a cosmic artifact, the ongoing creation of hyper-advanced intelligences. Rather than passive observers in a static universe, civilizations are active participants, shaping the fabric of reality itself through strategic, rational choice. This conceptual inversion also critiques the notion of scientific objectivity and highlights the potentially arbitrary nature of the laws that govern our world. Lem provocatively suggests that what we perceive as fundamental physical constraints might instead represent a negotiated compromise among cosmic civilizations, tacitly agreed upon through eons of indirect strategic maneuvering.
Formally, Lem’s narrative is a masterful example of metafiction and speculative fiction intertwined. Presented entirely in the form of a scholarly critique or review of an imaginary academic discourse, the text is saturated with playful irony and meticulous academic parody, mimicking the serious tone and structure of scientific Nobel lectures. Testa’s fictitious audience is depicted as divided: some see his cosmogonic theory as revolutionary, a brilliant reconciliation of cosmology and game theory, while others dismiss it as mere sophisticated fantasy, an imaginative fable wrapped in scientific jargon. By placing his narrative within such a faux-academic framework, Lem effectively blurs the lines between fact and fiction, philosophy and science, seriousness and irony, leaving readers to ponder the deeper implications and plausibility of his deliberately provocative thought experiment.
A Nash equilibrium in game theory is a state where no player can improve their outcome by unilaterally changing their strategy, assuming the other players’ strategies remain the same. It represents a stable state in a game where each player's chosen strategy is the best response to the strategies of all other players.
I have said much in recent essays about the spiritual significance of game theory and its “games” (prisoner’s dilemmas, arms races, commons tragedies, multipolar traps and malthusian traps), so I can’t say I was surprised when I learned that John Nash, the “beautiful mind” mathematician who won the 1994 Nobel Prize for his work on game theory, saw himself as messianic prophet.
He returned to Boston in May, 1967, where there were plans for him to teach a course at MIT in the fall, but he was in very bad shape and these plans had to be shelved. At the time, he told a colleague at Brandeis that he had quit taking his medications because when he took them “I stop hearing voices” (Nasar 1998, p. 321). Presumably, he felt that his role and purpose as a secret messianic figure was so important that it was essential for him to receive these messages. Years later, in the short autobiography he wrote on the occasion of the awarding of the Nobel Prize (Kuhn and Nasar 2002, pp. 5-11) he noted: “Then gradually I began to intellectually reject some of the delusionally influenced lines of thinking which had been characteristic of my orientation. This began, most recognizably, with the rejection of politically-oriented thinking as essentially a hopeless waste of intellectual effort. So at the present time I seem to be thinking rationally again in the style that is characteristic of scientists” (p. 10). He added, however, that “this is not entirely a matter of joy as if someone returned from physical disability to good physical health” because “one aspect of this is that rationality of thought imposes a limit on a person’s concept of his relation to the cosmos” (p. 10). He cited the case of Zarathustra who, to non-Zoroastrians, was “simply a madman who led millions of naive followers to adopt a cult of ritual fire worship,” but who, without his “madness,” would "necessarily have been only another of the millions or billions of human individuals who have lived and then been forgotten” (p. 10). In his television interview with Mike Wallace on the CBS 60 Minutes program (March 17, 2002), he noted that he did not think of himself at the time as merely delusional but rather as “unusually enlightened.”
A New Cosmogony appears in the 1971 book A Perfect Vacuum.
A Perfect Vacuum is the largest and best known collection of Stanisław Lem's fictitious criticism of nonexisting books.It was translated into English by Michael Kandel. Some of the reviews remind the reader of drafts of his science fiction novels, some read like philosophical pieces across scientific topics, from cosmology to the pervasiveness of computers, finally others satirize and parody everything from the nouveau roman to pornography, Ulysses, authorless writing, and Dostoevsky.
The book contains another story of note:
Odysseus of Ithaca: A novel about Odysseus of Ithaca (a small fictional town in Massachusetts), who started an organization to search for lost geniuses. He theorized that there are 3 levels of geniuses. Level 3 are those that are recognized in their lifetime, and can often achieve fame and success. Level 2 are those that are so ahead of their times and so disruptive that they were often persecuted and only rediscovered centuries later. Level 1 are those that could change the course of history, if they were listened to. But if they were not, then they would no longer be relevant, since human history would have marched on too far to turn towards the direction they pointed out.
So if game theory is the only constraint on cosmogony, then that would limit the role of pure whimsy — not of randomness, but of doing stuff that makes no sense, has no internal coherence. Because game theory is about the achievement of equilibria for conflicting goals. Thus, no role in universe-making for Mad Emperors? Asking for a friend.