The Cathedral · ledger
Every claim, with its mark
Every claim this wing makes, with its mark, its basis, its chapters, its sources and how it was checked. Filter it, follow any claim to its sources, and dispute any claim you think is wrong.
| Claim | Mark | Basis | Chapter | Sources | How it was checked | Last reviewed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FRM-01A person can be understood as four nested kingdoms: molecules, body and sense, relationships, and mind. | Imagined · framework (claim FRM-01: sources and how to dispute it) | framework | Ch. 2 | Alwis, H | Checked against the source | 7 October 2026 |
| FRM-02Upward constraint: what a higher level can be is limited by the levels beneath it. | Known (claim FRM-02: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 2 | Alwis, H | Checked against the source | 7 October 2026 |
| FRM-03Upward emergence: higher levels show properties that their parts do not have. | Known (claim FRM-03: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 2 | Alwis, H | Checked against the source | 8 October 2026 |
| FRM-03QWhat emergence ultimately is remains disputed: whether properties of the whole are new in reality, or new only in our descriptions of it. | Speculative (claim FRM-03Q: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 2 | Alwis, H | Checked against the source | 8 October 2026 |
| FRM-04Downward causation: higher levels reshape the levels beneath them. | Known (claim FRM-04: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 2, 26 | Alwis, H | Checked against the source | 8 October 2026 |
| FRM-04QPhilosophers still dispute whether the higher level is itself the cause, or only the lower-level processes that make it up. | Speculative (claim FRM-04Q: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 2, 26 | Alwis, H | Checked against the source | 8 October 2026 |
| FRM-05The same four-layer architecture recurs at the scale of the person, the cosmos and civilisation. | Imagined · framework (claim FRM-05: sources and how to dispute it) | framework | Ch. 27 | Alwis, H | Checked against the source | 7 October 2026 |
| THR-01A woman sits across from you on a train, looking at her phone. In a few minutes one of you will stand and leave. | Unmarked (narrative) | narrative | Prologue | Alwis, H | Checked against the source | 7 October 2026 |
| THR-02In Libet's experiments, brain activity preparing a simple movement began about a third of a second before people reported deciding to move. | Known (claim THR-02: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 19 and Prologue | Libet et al. (1983)Libet (1985) | Corrected from the manuscript | 7 October 2026 |
| THR-03What that timing means for free will is disputed: a later reanalysis suggests the early signal may be background neural noise rather than a decision already made. | Speculative (claim THR-03: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 19 | Schurger et al. (2012)Alwis, H | Checked from reference; source to be re-checked | 7 October 2026 |
| THR-04In chronically lonely people, white blood cells show a shifted pattern of gene activity: inflammation-related genes turned up, antiviral and antibody-related genes turned down. | Known (claim THR-04: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 13, Ch. 14 and Prologue | Cole et al. (2007)Alwis, H | Corrected from the manuscript | 7 October 2026 |
| THR-05Human eyes respond to light between about 380 and 750 nanometres, a sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum. | Known (claim THR-05: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 7 | Alwis, H | Checked from reference; source to be re-checked | 7 October 2026 |
| THR-06How small the sliver looks depends on how the spectrum is drawn: a vanishing fraction of one per cent on a linear scale, closer to two per cent on a logarithmic one. | Known (claim THR-06: sources and how to dispute it) | calculation | Ch. 7 and Prologue | Alwis, H | Corrected from the manuscript | 7 October 2026 |
| THR-07Colour is constructed by the brain from the light that reaches the eye; it is not a property carried by the light itself. | Known (claim THR-07: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 7 | Alwis, H | Checked from reference; source to be re-checked | 7 October 2026 |
| THR-08A human body contains roughly seven octillion (7 x 10^27) atoms. | Known (claim THR-08: sources and how to dispute it) | calculation | Ch. 1 and Prologue | Alwis, H | Checked from reference; source to be re-checked | 7 October 2026 |
| THR-09Each set of human DNA has about 3.1 billion letters, and nearly every cell carries two sets. | Known (claim THR-09: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 3 and Prologue | Alwis, H | Corrected from the manuscript | 7 October 2026 |
| THR-10When cells copy DNA, proofreading and repair bring the error rate down to roughly one mistake in ten billion letters. | Known (claim THR-10: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 3 and Prologue | Fijalkowska et al. (2012) | Corrected from the manuscript | 7 October 2026 |
| THR-11The iron in human blood was forged in stars that died before the Earth formed. | Known (claim THR-11: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 3 | Burbidge et al. (1957)Alwis, H | Checked from reference; source to be re-checked | 7 October 2026 |
| THR-13Many affective neuroscientists hold that grief, fear, care and play run on brain circuits humans share with other mammals; constructionist researchers dispute that these are dedicated circuits. | Speculative (claim THR-13: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | The Cathedral, Ch. 19; The Ancient Family | Panksepp (1998)Barrett (2017)Alwis, H | Checked from reference; source to be re-checked | 7 October 2026 |
| THR-14She belongs to an unbroken line of descent that reaches back to the earliest life on Earth. | Known (claim THR-14: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 18 | Theobald (2010) | Checked from reference; source to be re-checked | 7 October 2026 |
| THR-15She was born into one of more than seven thousand living languages. | Known (claim THR-15: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 17, 18 | Ethnologue: Languages of the World (2025) | Checked against the source | 7 October 2026 |
| THR-16The language you grow up in measurably affects how quickly you tell some colours apart. | Known (claim THR-16: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 17, 25 | Winawer et al. (2007) | Checked from reference; source to be re-checked | 7 October 2026 |
| THR-17Thirty-seven trillion cells agree on a shape and call it you. | Known (claim THR-17: sources and how to dispute it) | calculation | Ch. 4 and Epilogue | Bianconi et al. (2013) | Checked against the source | 7 October 2026 |
| THR-18The adult brain has about 86 billion neurons. | Known (claim THR-18: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 19 | Azevedo et al. (2009) | Checked from reference; source to be re-checked | 7 October 2026 |
| PLN-01Before you can think anything, your senses must take in the room and your brain must be supplied with glucose and oxygen. | Known (claim PLN-01: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 2 | Alwis, H | Checked from reference; source to be re-checked | 7 October 2026 |
| PLN-02Damage the lower kingdoms and the higher ones change or fail; the mind depends on the body far more than the body depends on the mind. | Known (claim PLN-02: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 2 | Alwis, H | Checked against the source | 8 October 2026 |
| PLN-03Moral and evaluative judgements often arrive as intuitions first, with reasons supplied afterwards. | Speculative (claim PLN-03: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 22 | Haidt (2001)Alwis, H | Checked against the source | 7 October 2026 |
| PLN-04The experience of insight is something new: no neuron has insights and no molecule reasons. | Known (claim PLN-04: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 2 | Alwis, H | Checked against the source | 8 October 2026 |
| PLN-05Social evaluation, such as arguing in front of others, can raise listeners' and speakers' cortisol. | Known (claim PLN-05: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 2, 6 | Dickerson and Kemeny (2004) | Checked from reference; source to be re-checked | 7 October 2026 |
| PLN-06A thought spoken in one mind can travel down through a room's relationships and hormones and, over time, into other people's gene expression. | Known (claim PLN-06: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 2 | Alwis, HCole et al. (2007)Dickerson and Kemeny (2004) | Corrected from the manuscript | 8 October 2026 |
| CAS-L1What matters for loneliness is feeling cut off, not the number of people nearby. | Known (claim CAS-L1: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 13 | Cacioppo and Hawkley (2009) | Checked from reference; source to be re-checked | 7 October 2026 |
| CAS-L2Lonely people show an inflammatory, low-antiviral pattern of gene activity in their white blood cells. | Known (claim CAS-L2: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 13, 14 | Cole et al. (2007) | Corrected from the manuscript | 7 October 2026 |
| CAS-L3Over four years, the loneliest people's systolic blood pressure rose 14.4 mm Hg more than that of the least lonely. | Known (claim CAS-L3: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 14 | Hawkley et al. (2010) | Checked against the source | 7 October 2026 |
| CAS-L4Loneliness is linked to more broken, less efficient sleep. | Known (claim CAS-L4: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 14 | Cacioppo et al. (2002) | Checked from reference; source to be re-checked | 7 October 2026 |
| CAS-L5Weak social ties carry a mortality risk comparable to well-known risk factors such as smoking. | Known (claim CAS-L5: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 13 | Holt-Lunstad et al. (2010) | Checked from reference; source to be re-checked | 7 October 2026 |
| CAS-L6Lonely people attend more to signs of social threat, which makes withdrawal more likely and can close the loop. | Known (claim CAS-L6: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 13, 14 | Cacioppo and Hawkley (2009) | Checked from reference; source to be re-checked | 7 October 2026 |
| CAS-C1Health tracks the quality of a person's social embedding at every level, from family to nation. | Speculative (claim CAS-C1: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 13 | Holt-Lunstad et al. (2010)Marmot et al. (1991) | Checked from reference; source to be re-checked | 8 October 2026 |
| CAS-C2People with six or more kinds of social tie were about four times less likely to develop a cold after deliberate exposure to the virus than people with one to three. | Known (claim CAS-C2: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 8, 13 | Cohen et al. (1997) | Checked against the source | 7 October 2026 |
| CAS-C3Social support during a stressful task lowers the cortisol response to it. | Known (claim CAS-C3: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 6, 13 | Heinrichs et al. (2003) | Checked from reference; source to be re-checked | 7 October 2026 |
| CAS-C4The narrator that tells a lonely mind it is unsafe tells a connected mind that it belongs; either story shapes the body. | Known (claim CAS-C4: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 19 | Cacioppo and Hawkley (2009)Cole et al. (2007)Hawkley et al. (2010) | From the manuscript; not independently checked | 8 October 2026 |
| CAS-S1In stable primate hierarchies, subordinate animals carry higher baseline cortisol; when the hierarchy is contested, dominant animals fare worse. | Known (claim CAS-S1: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 6 | Sapolsky (2005) | Checked from reference; source to be re-checked | 7 October 2026 |
| CAS-S2In the Whitehall studies of British civil servants, each step down the grade ladder brought worse health, even after lifestyle was accounted for. | Known (claim CAS-S2: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 6, 8 | Marmot et al. (1991) | Checked from reference; source to be re-checked | 7 October 2026 |
| CAS-S3Prolonged stress that cannot be controlled produces passivity. Its discoverers now argue that passivity is the default, and what is learned is control. | Known (claim CAS-S3: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 24 | Maier and Seligman (2016) | Corrected from the manuscript | 7 October 2026 |
| CAS-T1Secure rank brings lower baseline cortisol and faster recovery from stress, but only while the hierarchy holds. | Known (claim CAS-T1: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 6 | Sapolsky (2005) | Checked from reference; source to be re-checked | 7 October 2026 |
| CAS-T2Across primates, posture reflects social rank. Claims that adopting a powerful posture changes hormones have failed to replicate. | Known (claim CAS-T2: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 11 | Ranehill et al. (2015)Alwis, H | Checked against the source | 7 October 2026 |
| CAS-T3Studies suggest power can reduce perspective-taking, but a large replication of the best-known experiment found no effect. | Speculative (claim CAS-T3: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 24 | Galinsky et al. (2006)Ebersole et al. (2016) | Corrected from the manuscript | 7 October 2026 |
| CAS-X1Chronic social conditions such as insecure work and unstable housing predict allostatic load: wear across the cardiovascular, metabolic and immune systems together. | Known (claim CAS-X1: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 8 | McEwen (1998)Juster et al. (2010) | Checked from reference; source to be re-checked | 7 October 2026 |
| CAS-X2That wear is measured in cortisol, adrenaline and inflammatory markers such as C-reactive protein and IL-6. | Known (claim CAS-X2: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 8 | Juster et al. (2010) | Checked from reference; source to be re-checked | 7 October 2026 |
| CAS-X3Scarcity may tax attention and self-control. The original study's analysis has been challenged, and how large any effect is remains disputed. | Speculative (claim CAS-X3: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 24 | Mani et al. (2013)Wicherts and Zand Scholten (2013) | Checked against the source | 7 October 2026 |
| CAS-N1A parent's own attachment pattern matches the infant's, secure or insecure, in about three cases out of four. | Known (claim CAS-N1: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 18 | van IJzendoorn (1995) | Checked from reference; source to be re-checked | 7 October 2026 |
| CAS-N2In rats, a mother's licking and grooming changes the chemical marking of her pups' stress-hormone receptor gene and sets their stress response for life. | Known (claim CAS-N2: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 5 | Weaver et al. (2004) | Checked from reference; source to be re-checked | 7 October 2026 |
| CAS-N3Whether early care calibrates the human stress-response system for life is still debated. | Speculative (claim CAS-N3: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 5, 11 | Alwis, H | Checked against the source | 7 October 2026 |
| CAS-N4The narrator learns early what to expect from other people and keeps telling that story long after. | Speculative (claim CAS-N4: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 18 | van IJzendoorn (1995) | From the manuscript; not independently checked | 8 October 2026 |
| CAS-F1People conceived during the Dutch Hunger Winter showed less methylation of the IGF2 gene than their unexposed same-sex siblings six decades later. | Known (claim CAS-F1: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 5 | Heijmans et al. (2008) | Checked against the source | 7 October 2026 |
| CAS-F2Whether such marks pass to grandchildren in humans is contested. | Speculative (claim CAS-F2: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 5, 18 | Alwis, H | Checked against the source | 7 October 2026 |
| CAS-METATracing a condition as one cascade through four kingdoms is the book's synthesis; each step comes from separate research. | Imagined · framework (claim CAS-META: sources and how to dispute it) | framework | Ch. 14 | Alwis, H | Checked against the source | 7 October 2026 |
| KEY-01Two identical greys look different against different surrounds, because the brain judges brightness by context. | Known (claim KEY-01: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 7 | Adelson (2000) | Checked from reference; source to be re-checked | 7 October 2026 |
| BRE-01Breathing at about six breaths a minute raises vagally mediated heart-rate variability while you do it; the effect fades afterwards. | Known (claim BRE-01: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 12 | Laborde et al. (2022)Lehrer and Gevirtz (2014) | Checked against the source | 7 October 2026 |
| BRE-02Breathing is the one vital rhythm run both automatically and by choice, which makes it a door between mind and body. | Known (claim BRE-02: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 12 | Laborde et al. (2022)Lehrer and Gevirtz (2014) | Awaiting the author's confirmation | 8 October 2026 |
| NAR-01Given a list of words linked to sleep, people often remember 'sleep' itself, though it was never shown, and recognise it almost as often as the words they did see. | Known (claim NAR-01: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 19 | Roediger and McDermott (1995) | Checked against the source | 7 October 2026 |
| NAR-02Memory reconstructs rather than records: recalled memories become changeable again and can absorb misleading information. | Known (claim NAR-02: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 19 | Nader et al. (2000)Loftus (2005) | Checked from reference; source to be re-checked | 7 October 2026 |
| NAR-03When a choice is secretly swapped, about three people in four do not notice, and many give fluent reasons for a choice they did not make. | Known (claim NAR-03: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 19, 21 | Johansson et al. (2005) | Checked against the source | 7 October 2026 |
| NAR-04We deceive ourselves partly in order to deceive others more convincingly. | Speculative (claim NAR-04: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 21 | Alwis, H | Checked against the source | 8 October 2026 |
| WNG-08The number 150 as a natural human group size is contested: a 2021 re-analysis put the plausible range anywhere from 2 to 520. | Speculative (claim WNG-08: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | The Cathedral, Ch. 13, 17; What It Replaced | Lindenfors et al. (2021)Alwis, H | Checked against the source | 7 October 2026 |
| PRT-03If you are struggling now, talk to someone you trust or a local crisis line. In Australia, Lifeline is on 13 11 14. | Unmarked (narrative) | narrative | Ch. 24 | Checked from reference; source to be re-checked | 7 October 2026 | |
| EDU-08Reviews of programmes that improve children's executive functions find that trained skills transfer only narrowly, and expect the most successful approaches to address emotional, social and physical needs as well as cognitive ones. | Speculative (claim EDU-08: sources and how to dispute it) | finding | Ch. 27 | Diamond and Ling (2016) | Checked against the source | 7 October 2026 |
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