Overview

What if the universe, in its primordial state, is blind-an undifferentiated expanse where nothing is distinguished from anything else? And what if coherence, structure, and meaning emerge only through the act of making and maintaining distinctions? In The Blind Universe, Boris Kriger develops a powerful guiding principle: coherent systems emerge through defining differentiation. Drawing on Niklas Luhmann's theory of social systems, Spencer-Brown's calculus of distinctions, and Maturana and Varela's concept of autopoiesis, this book offers an accessible exploration of how reality itself is constituted through the stabilization of differences. Written in plain language for audiobook listeners with no prior background, Kriger guides readers through the architecture of functional differentiation-how law distinguishes legal from illegal, science distinguishes true from false, and economy distinguishes payment from non-payment. He examines why partition theory fails as a formalization, how structural coupling allows autonomous systems to co-evolve, and what happens when coherence collapses through dedifferentiation, fragmentation, or code instability. Synthesizing insights from his earlier work The Tiny Giants, Kriger reveals a startling conclusion: observers are not passive spectators in an indifferent cosmos but structural participants who generate the effective complexity that makes the universe describable. We are where the patterns concentrate. We are the universe becoming aware of itself. This is not mysticism-it is information theory, systems theory, and careful philosophical analysis. The Blind Universe is an invitation to see reality differently: not as a given, but as an ongoing achievement of distinction, maintained against the ever-present possibility of dissolution into noise. Keywords: systems theory, functional differentiation, autopoiesis, Luhmann, effective complexity, emergence, operative distinctions

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