The essays below were written one at a time, each reading some book, conversation, event, or technology of the moment through the Theory of Embedded Intelligence. Read together, they turned out to be something their author had not set out to build: a curriculum. Not a proposed one — an existing one, already written, already sequenced, already spanning the disciplines a university actually teaches.
So this page is now organized two ways at once. A Franke Honors Core gathers the essays about the formation of intelligence itself. Below it, the series is sorted by the discipline that would host it — the college whose students and faculty are closest to each essay’s question. And a set of thesis-scale clusters marks the trilogies and companion pairs written to be read in sequence. The reasoning behind this arrangement is set out in The Curriculum Already Exists. Whether any of it is taken up is, as always, entirely up to the minds that find it.
How These Essays Are Made
Bill brings the source material.
A book he’s just read. A conversation he’s just had with an AI. A news moment that demands a TEI response. The choice of occasion — and the framing of why it matters — is his. In his prompts he provides direction, raises questions, and sometimes pushes back when an earlier draft misses the point. The conviction that a given moment is worth engaging is what brings each essay into existence.
Claude does the writing.
Working from Bill’s source material, his prior writings on TEI, the Canonical Knowledge Base, and his explicit framing, Claude (Anthropic’s large language model) produces the essay’s prose, structure, and visual presentation — applying the theory Bill has spent decades developing. The sentences on the page are Claude’s. The theory they advance, and the judgment about what is worth saying, are Bill’s.
The Foundation reads with care, then publishes.
A draft passes through Foundation review before publication. Bill, Dianne, and others involved in stewardship of the theory read the work and check it for fidelity to TEI — whether the framing serves the theory rather than distorting it. Specific factual claims — historical attributions, particular figures, recent events — are checked where the Foundation can. Some are caught; some are not.
The essays are offered in good faith as serious applications of a framework, not as infallible scholarship. Their value is in the way TEI lets a reader see an occasion, not in the certainty of every detail. The reader is invited to engage critically — and, if a substantive error is found, to write to the Foundation. Published essays generally stand as published.
Currently in the Series
Franke Honors Core
College of Engineering
Governance embedded in the fabric is a design problem — which places this cluster inside the senior capstone rather than beside it.
College of Information Science
Data science, machine learning, and cyber operations — the strongest natural fit outside Engineering.
College of Science · Physics, Astronomy & Mathematics
The heaviest concentration in the series, and the one most likely to be read sceptically by faculty — which is the point of assigning it here.
College of Science · Neuroscience, Cognitive Science & Psychology
Essays that make empirically checkable claims about where intelligence resides.
College of Science · Lunar & Planetary Laboratory / Arizona Astrobiology Center
The shortest institutional distance of any cluster — the Mensch Prize is already present at the Astrobiology Center.
College of Science · Chemistry, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Where chemistry crosses into life.
College of Social & Behavioral Sciences · Philosophy
The seam where the framework is most exposed — and therefore most usefully tested. Expect these to come back argued with.
College of Social & Behavioral Sciences · Government & Public Policy
Self-government read as the same cycle at national scale.
College of Social & Behavioral Sciences · American Indian Studies
To be taught with Indigenous faculty leading, not applied to Indigenous lifeways from outside.
College of Social & Behavioral Sciences · Anthropology, Sociology & Linguistics
Conflict, meaning, and the life of signs.
College of Humanities
Religious Studies and Classics is the natural host; Public and Applied Humanities the alternative for an applied capstone.
Eller College of Management
Management information systems, entrepreneurship, and business ethics — thin in count, strong in fit.
James E. Rogers College of Law
The University’s undergraduate law major makes this live rather than aspirational.
College of Education
Educational psychology and sociocultural studies — in practice this college draws on five.
Colleges of Public Health, Health Sciences & Nursing
Franke’s own Human Health and Values minor is the most natural landing place.
Thesis-Scale Clusters
Six units and a year of work need more than a single essay. These ten clusters each carry that weight — written as sequences, to be read in order.