Neuroscience seems an unlikely place to find fundamental truths that could apply to everything in the universe. Brains are specific objects that do things that few, if any, other objects in the universe seem capable of. They perceive. They act. They read magazine articles. They are usually the exception, not the rule.
That is perhaps why the free-energy principle (FEP) has garnered so much attention. What began in the early 2000s as a tool to explain cognitive processes like perception and action began to be presented as a “unified brain theory”. Then the FEP outgrew the brain, being put…
