Spiritual Forces and Mathematical Models of Idea Evolution

In the same way, we can say that a spiritual force, or rather a spiritual evolutionary principle or a moral or intellectual impulse, remains indeterminate and abstract if it is not realized. With this we can define a fundamental principle: For a spiritual force to act on Earth, there must exist a human who realizes it.

The inner constitution of Man, formed by individuality and personality, allows him, through his own individuality, to establish relations and connections with abstract evolutionary principles, or formless ones, and simultaneously translate and realize them through his own personality composed of physical body, emotions and concrete thoughts coherent with historical and social data of a culture and historical period. This translation allows a reality belonging to an abstract formless world, which we could define as spiritual, to be translated and transferred into a concrete formal world, which we could define as material, and thus act on Earth.

Organic Evolution of a Thought

To analyze the organic evolution of a thought, vehicle and formal translation of a spiritual evolutionary principle, let us make a concrete and easily generalizable example.

Suppose we witness, in a certain well-defined historical period, the presence of a spiritual impulse which, for our example, we hypothesize to be the idea of Freedom. All men, endowed with a more or less developed individuality, are potentially receptive to such spiritual impulse. The individuals most receptive to such impulse feel inspired by it. Received by each individuality in a similar way, however such impulse takes different forms according to the personalities of individual persons and their historical contingencies: for some the idea of Freedom takes the form of religious freedom or worship; for others that of freedom of speech or thought; for others freedom from social conventions; for still others it takes the form of artistic independence, etc.

If the impulse is strong enough to modify an individual's life habits, then we could call such impulse an evolutionary principle because it has an effective impact on a person's evolutionary path. In this case, each personality will decide to act and translate into practice, realize, the inspiration or impulse to which their own soul or spirit is receptive.

The modalities of expression and realization of such ideal will obviously depend on each person's personality: a politician might decide to give a speech inspired by libertarian values; a writer to condense such inspiration into a novel; a philosopher into an essay on freedom; a musician into inspired music; a director into a denunciation film; a lawyer into a legal fight against oppression; a teenager into an aimless journey away from home; an instructor by sensitizing his disciples; and so on.

In any case, the spiritual impulse, the idea, becomes concretized and in this process assumes characteristic peculiar traits that depend on the contingent and historical characteristics of the society and personality that realizes such idea. If such characteristic traits are sufficiently original, we can say that a thought has been born, otherwise we can say that such action has gone to nourish or enrich an already existing thought.

After the gestation process, with the realization of concrete works, the receptivity to the original impulse becomes catalyzed in individuals and the current of thought enters its development and growth phase, following the classic rules of mathematical epidemiology.

In this case the entire population is considered as divided into three groups:

• Susceptible $S$: people who have not yet come into contact with a particular current of thought;
• Inspired $I$: people who feel inspired by a particular current of thought and act coherently;
• Refractory $R$: people who are not sensitive to such themes, or who have cooled down over time.

At the moment we suppose that these are the only groups present in the population $N$, i.e. $N = S + I + R$. In this case we define three fundamental parameters that determine the dynamics of thought evolution:

• The average contact probability $c$ between an inspired and a susceptible: which can be increased or decreased depending on the notoriety of the inspired, their evangelical capacity, the means at their disposal in the diffusion of an idea, etc.;
• The transmissibility $T$ of the idea: depending on the ease with which it can be exposed, understood and accepted by people of different cultural, social extraction, etc.;
• The time necessary for assimilation of the fundamental nucleus of the idea with which one has come into contact.

Given these three constants, we define $\beta = cT$ as the transmission rate...