01 / 08
Conscious agents form the fundamental ontology
Reality, at its base, is composed of interacting conscious agents — not particles, fields, or spacetime points.
The Trace Institute
What if reality is not what we think it is?
The Trace Institute is a research initiative investigating consciousness as fundamental to reality — and spacetime as the interface, not the substrate.
Scroll
The thesis
Modern science assumes spacetime and matter as fundamental. The Trace Institute proposes the inverse: consciousness is fundamental, and the physical world is the interface through which it interacts.
Our work is mathematical, peer-reviewed, and built from first principles. We are not philosophers asking what reality might be. We are scientists and mathematicians proposing a formal framework — Trace Logic — that derives quantum theory and general relativity from a deeper substrate of conscious agents and their dynamics.
The Eight Conjectures
A framework for a deeper reality.
Eight formal conjectures direct the Institute's work. Together they describe a path from conscious agents to the standard models of physics and biology.
02 / 08
Spacetime emerges from agent dynamics
Space and time are not the stage on which physics unfolds. They are projections of the dynamics between conscious agents.
03 / 08
Quantum formalism derives from agent interactions
The mathematics of quantum mechanics is recoverable as a limit of the formal dynamics of conscious agent networks.
04 / 08
General relativity emerges from Trace Logic
Gravity and the curvature of spacetime arise as large-scale features of the same underlying logic governing agent dynamics.
The team
Frontier scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers.
Donald Hoffman
Co-founderCognitive scientist. UC Irvine. Author of The Case Against Reality. Originator of interface theory of perception.
Chetan Prakash
Co-founderMathematician. Cal State San Bernardino. Co-architect of conscious agent theory and the Fitness-Beats-Truth theorem.
Gaspard Giroud des Montagnes
Co-founderResearcher and Institute architect. Trace Logic, agent dynamics, and the formal framework underlying the Institute's work.
Nima Arkani-Hamed
Affiliated researcherTheoretical physicist. Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Contributions to the geometry beyond spacetime.
Chris Timmermann
Affiliated researcherNeuroscientist. Imperial College London. Centre for Psychedelic Research. Consciousness, perception, altered states.
Andrew Gallimore
Affiliated researcherNeurobiologist and pharmacologist. Author of Reality Switch Technologies. DMT, perception, and the structure of experience.
Media
Conversations and lectures.
Donald Hoffman's appearances across podcasts, conferences, and lectures — and an expanding library of original work from the Institute.
Get involved
A research program at the edge of physics, mathematics, and consciousness.
The Institute is privately supported. Help fund the work, follow the research, or join us as a collaborator.