Abstract Touch-up
This page’s history section could elaboration on the history of its discovery.
The Universal Strata Model, or USM, is a scientific model of the universe which attempts to explain its organizational composition. The model is widespread and generally considered common knowledge amongst the commoners of wealthy nations and scholars alike.
The USM is useful to fields like philosophy, theogenesis, and astronomy. It is particularly useful for predicting the personification of natural phenomena.
Layers
The USM divides the universe into 3 layers: The first contains the universe, the second nature, and the third the real and unreal. The universe is defined as everything: the physical, metaphysical, known, unknown, and unknowable. Nature is a portion of the universe which further contains the real and unreal. The real is that which can be perceived and traditionally measured. In contrast the unreal is that which cannot be percieved or measured through traditional means.
Nature undergoes a phenomena known as natural personification wherein real and unreal phenomena become complex structures which themselves mimic nature and are capable of altering it. Natural personification is responsible for the creation of limn, stars, and Gods. For more information on the specifics if natural personification and its relation to USM see the page on natural personification.
Complications
The USM has stood as the uncontested model of the universe used by scholars for many hundreds of years. Despite this, however, the model suffers from a number of issues and complications. These mainly stem from questions currently deemed unanswerable by many scholars. The USM has seen a few modifications since its widespread adoption.
The unknown size of nature has, for some scholars, been used to imply that nature may itself simply be the universe. This has been contested by other scholars who quote the First Epoch Star which is believed to date the birth of the Gods of Life and Death. If the former is true then the Epoch Star implies that natural personification did not always exist, but if it is false then there must be something which exists beyond nature and which nature was later born within (the universe).
The creation of either nature or natural personification has also been used as a way to poke holes into the model. Their creation had to have occured at some point or they would have had to have always existed. Despite this, the First Epoch Star still dates the birth of Life and Death which means they came into existence by some means at a specific point in time. It is unknown if this was because natural personification has not always existed or if because nature has not always existed.
The First Epoch Stars dating of Life and Death does not mean time existed before the duo, as their birth time is placed relative to the creation of the star, which itself is dated by scholars relative to the modern day.
History
Early Models
The earliest iterations of the USM date as far back as the mid God-War. These models were invented by the earliest God-backed city-states, possibly with the help of Gods, as a means to better understand the natural world. These early iterations would be very crude, but still reminiscent of the models we have today.
One recovered Sextownian model imagined the world as only reality nested within unreality.