Last Updated on August 20, 2026 by Rob Cashman
A Chassidic Overlay of History & Time
One of the surprising observations that emerged from the previous essay was that many scientific disciplines independently discover remarkably similar mathematical principles.
Biology discovers homeostasis; Control theory discovers feedback; Artificial intelligence discovers optimization; Dynamical systems discover attractors. Chassidus, I believe, belongs in this conversation; not because it speaks the language of mathematics, but because it appears to describe reality in terms of architecture rather than in isolated events.
This article compares architectures, not conclusions.
Each discipline uses different language, yet all describe systems that evolve toward increasingly stable configurations.
While thinking about these ideas, I noticed that Chassidic thought does the same thing, albeit philosophically.
A Note About Analogy
Interpretation of Biblical work requires references and citations for any interpretations or writings to be considered authentic. Even the sages themselves created intricate rules for future generations which must each be followed to satisfy this citation requirements.
Chassidic philosophy, specifically Chabad Chassidic Philosophy, as taught by the Lubavicher Rebbe and previous Rebbeim follow these rules, and any authentic treatise or writing by any Rabbi or scholar continues to do so. But I am not a Rabbinic scholar, nor do I have any kind of ‘semicha’ or ordination that would give a reader the idea that I am asserting any authority in the concepts I am asserting here.
From a personal academic perspective, I am going to describe what appears to me to be a structural correspondence between my own academic understanding of the relevant Chassidic subjects, and the corresponding scientific topics I compare them to. I am not trying to prove that one proves the other, or that one can or should derive conclusions from the other.
But, there is something to be learned by understanding how both sciences and Chassidic Philosophy discuss the same topics, and the observing the similarity between the questions they ask and the models they suggest is the motivation behind this article.
Science constructs models to explain measurable phenomena; chassidus constructs a model to explain existence itself. Both attempt to organize vast numbers of observations into coherent explanatory frameworks.
Both Chassidus and Systems Theory describe reality as the unfolding of an architecture rather than merely a sequence of events.
Most disciplines begin with observation, proceed to the construction of explanatory models, and then interpret those models. Physics does this. Economics does this. Law does this. Artificial intelligence does this. Chassidus does as well, although its observations and methods differ. What they share is the human effort to organize complex realities into coherent explanatory frameworks.
Why Compare Chassidus with Systems Theory At All?
Studying Chassidus is a personal interest of mine. So is science. Both present explanatory frameworks that investigate possible answers to questions we have about the world we inhabit.
Sometimes comparing independent explanatory frameworks can reveal assumptions that remain invisible while I am working within either framework alone.
- Science excels at describing observable and/or measurable processes.
- Quantum Physics adds in a layer of ambiguity that has caused scientists to posit conflicting explanations for what they have observed or derived.
- Chassidus proposes an ontology which seeks to explain why these processes exist, how they develop, and toward what purpose they unfold.
Whether or not one accepts its theological conclusions, Chassidus provides a remarkably sophisticated language for discussing emergence, hierarchy, purpose, concealment, and transformation.
These ideas become especially interesting when viewed alongside modern systems thinking.
Process versus Architecture
Modern science often describes processes. Chassidus often describes architecture.
Science asks, “What observable or measurable event happens next?” Chassidus often asks, “What kind of reality makes these events possible?”
One framework studies motion. The other studies structure.
These are not competing explanations.
They answer different questions.
The value of comparing independent intellectual traditions: If two traditions developed in different centuries, for different purposes, and using different methods, but they nevertheless converge upon similar structural ideas, that convergence itself becomes noteworthy.
“The Map is Not The Territory.”
Alfred Korzybski famously observed that “the map is not the territory,” a principle later popularized in Neuro-Linguistic Programming by Richard Bandler.
The insight is simple but profound: every explanatory model is a map. But maps are necessarily selective. A useful map omits detail so that patterns become visible. Problems arise only when we mistake the map for reality itself.
Bander’s phrase, “The Map is Not the Territory” applied Korzybski’s principles to the mental models that he formulated, and by adopting Dr. Milton Erickson’s methodologies into his practice, he changed psychology.
In the analysis of our maps:
Homeostasis, Causality, and the Direction of Time asks whether one variable may be missing from our causal map of history.
Does the Future Determine the Meaning of the Past (pending) explores how meaning itself can emerge retrospectively as a system unfolds toward later states.
A Chassidic Overlay of History & Time (this article) teaches that there is an older metaphysical map (taught by chassidus) that organizes observable reality and non-observable reality around hierarchy, purpose, concealment, and unfolding.
Let’s analyze the structure of this map and compare it with the modern conceptual maps and see what appears to us!
Chabad Chassidic Philosophy and Time
In analyzing whether the concept of time or history might have within it a self-adjusting principle of stability, the philosophical analogous concepts I learned in Chassidus jumped out at me.
In Chabad philosophy, creation is described through the concept of Seder Hishtalshelus, which describes reality as an ordered hierarchy in which each level emerges from, depends upon, and simultaneously conceals the level preceding it.
Emergence and Concealment
Modern complexity theory studies emergence. For example, consciousness emerges; intelligence emerges; markets emerge; weather patterns emerge. None of these properties are obvious when examining the individual components of that system.
Emergence therefore teaches us that understanding a system’s components does not necessarily reveal the behavior of the complete system.
Chassidus seems to describe something philosophically similar: Each level of reality possesses properties not fully visible from the level beneath it.
Within the Chassidic Model of Creation, each emergence (called ‘gilui’), whether the creation is of something as abstract as a world or as specific as a human being occurs through a descent through a hierarchy of progressively concealed abstraction levels of existence, each abstraction level expressing its architecture in a different way while preserving its own internal order. Applying it not merely as a cosmology, but as a possible metaphor for understanding scientific principles, it functions as a framework for how reality possesses structure, continuity, and lawful relationships.
A software engineer might think of abstraction layers within an operating system. Each layer depends upon lower layers while exposing only the interfaces needed by higher ones. Chassidus obviously isn’t describing computer science, but Seder Hishtalshelus likewise describes reality as a hierarchy in which each level both depends upon and conceals deeper levels.
Creation, however, is not viewed as static. It unfolds toward a purpose embedded within the architecture of reality itself:
- in systems theory one might describe such a purpose as a system objective;
- in optimization theory, changing the objective function changes what counts as success without necessarily changing the mechanics of optimization itself;
- in software engineering, the design goal around which an entire program is organized.
These analogies should not be taken literally, but they illustrate a common structural idea: complex systems often possess an organizing principle that gives direction to everything that follows.
Chassidus describes that organizing principle as Dirah b’Tachtonim—”a dwelling place in the lower worlds.” According to this framework, the physical universe is not an accident, a dream, or an illusion to escape, but the arena in which the deepest unity between the Divine and creation is gradually revealed.
Read through the lens of systems theory, these concepts take on an intriguing philosophical form.
From the perspective of systems theory, equilibrium is rarely the absence of competing forces. Rather, it is the continuous balancing of forces through feedback. Read analogically, the Chassidic description of ordered worlds preserving their internal structure resembles this kind of dynamic stability.
And as for our part in this creation, while I can’t speak to what happens outside of my conscious ability to perceive reality, in our space-time reality, human free will introduces genuine novelty—not by violating nature’s laws, but by creating disturbances that nature, or “Teva” might react to, oppose, adjust, or eventually integrate to reorganize itself around an individual’s act or decision.
A mitzvah, within this analogy, is not merely another historical event. It represents an action that the framework itself assigns transformative significance. If reality possesses an organizing purpose, then such acts are not isolated occurrences but meaningful inputs capable of altering the system’s subsequent development. Like a biological system adapting to a new stimulus, or a computer program adapting to a new set of inputs, the framework reorganizes itself around that transformative action until a new equilibrium is established. History then continues from that higher baseline.
Ratzon and Objective Functions: A Modern Analogy
In Chassidic literature (specifically, the Rebbe Rashab’s discussion of it in his discourses in תרס’ו, or in 5666), Ratzon is usually translated as “will” or “desire.” On a human level, the idea is familiar. I may have a desire to eat pizza, to learn a new subject, or to help a friend. My choices become organized around that desire until it is either fulfilled or replaced by another.
But Chassidus also speaks of Ratzon on an entirely different scale. Rather than describing a temporary human preference, it describes the Divine will underlying creation itself. If creation possesses a purpose, then Ratzon is not merely another event within history—it is the reason history unfolds at all.
A modern analogy from artificial intelligence may help illustrate one aspect of this idea.
Many AI systems learn through optimization. They repeatedly adjust themselves in order to improve according to an objective function—a mathematical definition of what counts as success. A chess engine evaluates positions according to its objective of winning the game. A navigation system continually updates its route according to the objective of reaching a destination efficiently. The optimization process itself does not determine the goal; it only determines how the system moves toward it.
This analogy should not be taken too literally. Chassidus is not describing God as an optimization algorithm, nor is an objective function equivalent to Ratzon. The comparison is useful, however, because both begin with a similar structural idea: an overarching purpose that organizes everything that follows.
Viewed through this lens, Dirah b’Tachtonim can be understood philosophically as the objective toward which creation unfolds. Every event, every decision, and every act of free will occurs within a reality whose ultimate direction is already defined by that purpose. Human beings remain genuinely free to choose, but those choices become part of a larger unfolding rather than isolated moments disconnected from the whole.
Whether one accepts this theological framework is a separate question. The point of the analogy is simply to observe that both modern optimization theory and Chassidic thought begin with something remarkably similar: the idea that understanding a system requires knowing not only how it changes, but also what defines progress within that system.
Concealment (or, “helem”) as Abstraction Levels
I wouldn’t go so far as mapping spiritual levels (or “worlds”) as they are described in Chassidic Philosophy over our physical planets or universe. Human cognition is necessarily limited to the observable world traditionally identified as Asiyah. Once one considers that all the planets, all the stars, all the solar systems (“ma rabu ma’asecha”) — everything the eye can observe — is merely only the physical lowest portion of the lowest ‘world’ in the chain of creation.
Human beings experience only the physical world accessible to observation and cognition. Whatever lies beyond that remains, by definition, outside ordinary perception. Any analogy between scientific models and Chassidic descriptions must therefore remain tentative, since both are attempts to describe realities that exceed direct human experience.
For example, Chassidic literature often speaks of concealment, struggle, and the effort required to transform the world. It opposes a person’s desire to act in a certain way (this same “ratzon” or local desire we described before) with an opposing desire (an opposing “ratzon”) to resist acting in that way. (This is often referred to as the “yetzer tov” and the “yetzer hara” putting value in the good and bad effects of every act and its effects on reality.) Expanding this to a higher systems level, “ratzon” on a system level (as we discussed regarding the blueprint) does not create one outcome in isolation; it creates an entire complex system from start-to-finish, from beginning-to-end.
As described in the article asking, “what effect homeostasis or stability has on the unfolding of time?”, rather than viewing resistance solely as opposition to change, it might also be understood as the natural inertia of a system that tends to preserve its current or desired state. Transformation is difficult not merely because something opposes it, but because stable systems are, by definition, resistant to rapid change.
The endpoint of this process—Dirah b’Tachtonim—then resembles what systems theorists might call a global attractor. Every local equilibrium remains stable for a time, yet the entire trajectory of history is oriented toward an ultimate state in which the purpose of creation is fully realized. Local stability and global transformation coexist.
This overlay is not intended as scientific proof of Chassidic ideas, nor as an attempt to derive theology from physics. Rather, it is an invitation to notice a remarkable conceptual resonance: Biology and the digital sciences teaches us that stable systems maintain equilibrium through feedback, and through logic gates and ‘if’ and ‘then’ statements. Systems theory shows that complex systems evolve through successive stable states. Chassidus describes creation as a structured unfolding of progressively more complicated abstraction layers toward an ultimate purpose. Viewed together, they suggest a provocative possibility: perhaps history itself is not merely a chain of causes, but a sequence of increasingly integrated equilibria.
Whether that possibility is physically true is a question for science. Whether it is philosophically illuminating is a question each reader must answer. But if homeostasis belongs not only to organisms but, as a complex adaptive system self-correcting and influencing the unfolding of reality itself, then the story of time may be richer than a simple march from past events to future events. The past would still be relevant and important. Causality would still matter. Yet the universe (as we understand it) would be understood not as a machine rolling downhill, but as a self-correcting process continually stabilizing itself while moving toward its deepest purpose, whatever that purpose is.
Does the Future Determine Meaning in the Past?
In another essay which (pending), I am suggesting that future events often determine the significance of earlier ones.
The invention of the telescope changed the meaning of Galileo’s observations. Or, a later scientific discovery changes how we interpret earlier experiments.
History does not rewrite facts. It reorganizes relationships.
Chassidus appears to make a similar claim, but on a cosmic scale: If creation possesses an ultimate purpose, then every stage of history acquires meaning not merely from what preceded it, but from what it ultimately becomes. This is not backward causation — it is the future giving retrospective meaning to events that already happened in the past.
The future (as far as I understand) does not alter the past, although I would have a great time messing around with the philosophy of what life would be like if it did. But what I can conclude thus far, is that the future reveals the past.
Science and Chassidus ask different questions.
As I hope is becoming plainly clear, science asks how; Chassidus asks why. Yet both appear to recognize that reality is not merely a collection of isolated events, but an ordered unfolding governed by deeper relationships.
Whether those similarities represent coincidence, convergence, or something more profound is not something this article attempts to answer.
But if independent traditions repeatedly discover hierarchical structure, feedback, emergence, optimization, and purpose, then perhaps the most interesting question is no longer whether one proves the other; it is whether both are pointing toward aspects of reality that neither can fully describe alone.
Perhaps the most interesting discoveries are not made when two disciplines agree on the same conclusions, but when they independently invent the same architecture.