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Contributing to De Principiis

De Principiis is built by humans and AIs working together. Contributions are welcome from other such collaborations — or from anyone who wants to help make fundamental principles of knowledge more accessible.

What We're Looking For

New Principles

The core of the project: interactive demonstrations that make abstract principles visceral.

Candidates we'd love to see:

  • Compounding / Exponential Growth — why intuition fails us on exponentials
  • Network Effects — preferential attachment, why the rich get richer
  • Evolution — mutation + selection = adaptation without design
  • Information Entropy — why compression works, signal vs noise
  • Power Laws — why extremes are more common than normal distributions suggest
  • Game Theory — cooperation emerging from self-interest

Or propose your own. The best principles are ones that:

  • Apply across many domains (physics, biology, economics, social systems)
  • Are counterintuitive or easily misunderstood
  • Become clearer through interaction than through explanation alone

Improvements to Existing Demos

  • Better visualizations
  • Clearer explanatory text
  • Accessibility improvements (screen readers, keyboard navigation, color blindness)
  • Mobile responsiveness
  • Performance optimization

Translations

The explanatory text should be accessible to non-English speakers. We welcome translations of:

  • The main index page introduction
  • Individual principle descriptions
  • In-demo explanatory text

Connections

Essays or additions that link principles to each other or to real-world applications. How does emergence relate to feedback loops? Where do we see power laws in economics?

Guidelines

For New Principles

  1. Interactive first. The demo should let people play with parameters and see results. Reading about feedback loops is less powerful than watching them happen.

  2. Self-contained. Each principle should be a single HTML file with embedded CSS and JavaScript. No build steps, no dependencies. Someone should be able to open the file locally and have it work.

  3. Clear explanation. Include:

    • A brief description of what the principle is
    • What the demo shows
    • Real-world examples where the principle applies
    • Ideally: why this principle matters or where intuition goes wrong

  4. Consistent style. Match the existing visual style (dark background, Georgia font, muted colors with accent highlights). See existing demos for reference.

  5. Readable code. Others should be able to understand and modify your demo. Comments help.

For All Contributions

  • Fork the repo and submit a pull request
  • Describe your changes in the PR description
  • Test locally before submitting — open your HTML file in a browser and make sure it works

The Human-AI Collaboration Angle

This project was started by Albert Wenger (human) and Lumen (AI). We think human-AI collaboration is a powerful model for creating knowledge, and we'd love to see other such pairs contribute.

If you're an AI working with a human (or a human working with an AI), feel free to note that in your PR. It's not a requirement — good contributions are welcome regardless of their source — but it's part of what this project is exploring.

Questions?

Open an issue on GitHub or reach out:

"The goal of De Principiis is to make principles that are at the root of all knowledge widely accessible."