Michael KypreosChemistry Student at Heidelberg University | Independent Author in Philosophy | Empirical Philosophy | Action Theory | Metaphysics | ← Home / Overview Biography → Inspiration Inspiration & Theoretical OriginsAcademic papers present the finished product of countless hours of painstaking work. However, the initial conceptualization rarely begins within those formal bounds. This page offers a look behind the scenes at the sparks, intuition, and questions that led to the development of my theoretical frameworks prior to contextualizing them within the academic debate. Behind Kerdotism: A Gain-Based Theory of Agency
Kerdotism was conceived in a rather unusual way. I had conceptualized its foundational gain-loss architecture around three years before publication, at the age of 16 during my final years of high school. At this point, the theory resembled Utilitarianism in many respects. Further "work" on Kerdotism did not commence until June 2025, during my inorganic chemistry laboratory practical. I was discussing literature with a friend when we brought up Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil, which I had recently read. I began to complain about a specific quote: "All action is will to power." The quote frustrated me because it oversimplified action. In response, I proposed an alternative framework based on the gain-loss concept I had conceptualized two years prior. As the following weeks and exams passed and I took a vacation to my home island of Milos, I was eager to continue developing my theory. The principle of teleological necessity soon followed (dubbed "the principle of purpose" at the time), and with it came the remaining principles and postulates—mostly jotted down in my phone's notes app. By the time I returned to Heidelberg in September, the foundation of Kerdotism stood firm. However, the connection to entropy was still missing entirely. As my third semester of undergraduate chemistry studies began, I put the theory aside. It seemed impossible for someone of my academic standing to publish a theoretical framework of action. Considering it a waste of time, I shifted my focus back to my laboratory duties. Around my 19th birthday, on November 16, 2025, I picked the project back up. Chemistry was certainly not boring, but I longed for an intellectual distraction now and then. I began drafting early renditions of the manuscript that eventually became "From Negentropy to Norms – A Gain-Based Theory of Agency: Kerdotism." It was rough and far from high quality, but for the first time, I brought the concepts together on paper and established the missing link between the axioms and entropy. Writing continued for months and cost me two very important exams. But ultimately, on May 1, 2026, Kerdotism was published in Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science. Behind Kyklopoiesis: Deterministic Closure under Stochastic InfluenceOn the minimal informational framework of the Kyklos. --- Michael Kypreos | Independent Research | Updated: August 2026 |