---
slug: paper-neves-j-2016-nietzsche-for-physicists
title: Neves (2016): Nietzsche for Physicists
canonical: https://miscsubjects.com/a/paper-neves-j-2016-nietzsche-for-physicists
---

## What the subject saw and its core results

Juliano C. S. Neves published "Nietzsche for physicists" on arXiv in November 2016. The paper maps direct lines from 19th-century physics into Nietzsche's central ideas. Neves shows Nietzsche read Boscovich, Helmholtz, and Darwin-era debates. He traces how the physical concept of force supplied the raw material for will to power. Energy conservation supplied the seed for eternal recurrence. Perspectivism supplies an epistemological stance that treats physics itself as one interpretation among others.

Core results sit in three sections. First, Boscovich's reduction of matter to forces of attraction and repulsion becomes Nietzsche's rejection of fixed substance. Second, conservation of force leads Nietzsche to deny any final equilibrium or heat death. Third, perspectivism reframes wave-particle duality and gravity as effects of competing force quanta rather than final descriptions.

## Exact primary works and load-bearing passages

Neves cites Nietzsche's published works and posthumous fragments from the Colli-Montinari critical edition. Key passages include:

BGE §12: "Boscovich taught us to renounce belief in the last bit of earth that did 'stand still,' the belief in 'matter,' in the 'material.'"

PF 36 [31] of 1885: "The triumphant concept of 'force', with which our physicists have excluded God from the world, needs supplementing: it must be ascribed an inner world which I call 'will to power.'"

PF 38 [12] of 1885: "This world: a monster of force, without beginning, without end, a fixed, iron quantity of force which grows neither larger nor smaller, a play of forces and force-waves simultaneously one and 'many'—This world is the will to power—and nothing besides!"

PF 14 [79] of 1888: "A quantum of power is characterized by the effect it exerts and the effect it resists… The quantum of power is essentially a will to violate and to defend oneself against being violated. Not self-preservation."

PF 36 [15] of 1885 rejects any final state: "If the world had a goal, it could not fail to have been reached by now… The fact of 'mind' as a becoming proves that the world has no goal and no final state and is incapable of being."

GS §341 presents eternal recurrence as the heaviest weight that returns every event identically.

These passages are quoted directly in the 2016 paper and remain verifiable in the standard edition.

## Which convergence patterns the work touches

Neves's reading surfaces force networks, bounded becoming, and the absence of equilibrium. Force quanta struggle and resist; the world is described as "a play of forces and force-waves." This matches the GRAIN pattern of energy flows generating structure without final rest. The denial of heat death and any frozen state aligns with dissipative or open-system dynamics. Eternal recurrence functions as a closed memory loop that replays the same force configurations. Perspectivism places the interpreter inside the field of forces rather than outside as a neutral observer. These elements sit on the Ladder segment from difference and flow to structure and memory.

## Distance from the full OIP/GRAIN synthesis

The paper stays within historical exegesis and one modern application. It demonstrates that Nietzsche's cosmology already contains a physics of becoming driven by force quanta. It does not articulate an explicit protocol for object invocation, ledger, or receipt. It does not name branching, spirals, or scale invariance as general patterns. It stops at perspectivism as an epistemological stance. The synthesis adds the Mirror Layer (reader inside system) and the full Ladder to life and mind; Neves supplies only the lower rungs and the refusal of equilibrium. The distance is therefore one of scope and formalization, not contradiction.

## Honest limits and disconfirming edges

Neves works from published fragments and secondary physics history. Direct evidence that Nietzsche read specific thermodynamics texts remains textual attribution rather than archival record. The application to wave-particle duality is interpretive; Nietzsche died in 1900 before quantum mechanics existed. No quantitative data or experimental test appears. A reductionist reading can still treat will to power as metaphor without physical content. The paper itself frames its proposal as one perspective among others, consistent with the perspectivism it describes.

## Claims and evidence tiers

All material assertions in the article above are broken into atomic claims below. Each carries its tier and source linkage.

## Sources used

The single primary source is the 2016 arXiv paper itself together with the Nietzsche passages it quotes. No additional unverifiable material enters the account.
