APOLOGIA
On the ontological primitive assumption
Reality is
fundamentally structural.
‘Reality is fundamentally structural’ – the primitive assumption of the ontological framework described in Underpinnings is a working primitive adopted from developments across science and philosophy for a considerable time. Different fields, using incompatible methods and starting from very different premises, have been converging on the same progressive shift: explanation works better when we treat structure, relation, pattern, and organisation as more basic than ‘objects’ or ‘stuff.’
The Convergent Pattern
Across Disciplines
Philosophy of Science
Structural Realism (John Worrall) and its stronger ontic forms (associated with James Ladyman, Steven French, Don Ross and others) shift explanatory emphasis from objects considered in isolation towards the relations and structures described by successful theories. Across theory change, objects and their interpretation may alter while significant mathematical or relational structure can persist.1234
Physics
From John Wheeler’s “it from bit” through Max Tegmark’s Mathematical Universe Hypothesis, Carlo Rovelli’s relational quantum mechanics, and the modern geometric reformulations of scattering amplitudes (Nima Arkani-Hamed and others), the deepest descriptions increasingly replace “things” with information, symmetry, geometry and constraint.5678 The more fundamental physics becomes, the less it looks like objects and the more it looks like structure in transformation.
Biology
Michael Levin’s work on morphogenesis, bioelectric signalling and anatomical homeostasis shows that an organism’s identity and form are maintained by persistent organisational patterns and electrical gradients that survive constant molecular turnover.9 Cells and molecules are replaced; the pattern recruits new material to sustain itself. For CHR, the inference is: the organism is the structure.
Cognitive Science & Perception
Donald Hoffman’s Interface Theory of Perception argues that evolution shaped our senses as a user interface tuned for adaptive behaviour, not as a veridical window onto objective reality.10 We navigate structured representations, not raw objects.
Complexity, Cybernetics & Information Theory
Across these domains the explanatory centre of gravity has shifted from isolated entities to interaction, feedback, emergence, constraint and organisation.1112 This is not a coordinated movement but a recurring structural echo appearing independently in fields that otherwise have little in common.
Why Treating Structure
as Primitive Is Reasonable
- Stability
- Objects and materials constantly change or are replaced. The relations, symmetries and organisational patterns often persist. A melody is not the air that carries it. A wave is not the water. A person is not their current set of atoms. Where identity survives substrate change, identity is structural.
- Explanatory power
- Structure directly accounts for multiply realisable patterns (the same form appearing in different materials), cross-domain regularities and the fact that mathematical relations apply so broadly.
- What theories actually preserve
- Scientific progress does not conserve objects; it conserves invariances, symmetries, conservation laws and transformation rules — the core insight of Structural Realism.
- Causal efficacy
- Computation manipulates formal structure. Biology maintains organisational structure. Culture transmits symbolic structure. In each case, the pattern instantiated in matter does the real causal work.
- Cross-domain reach
- Matter, energy, or computation are domain-specific. Structure is the only candidate primitive that appears coherently across physics, biology, mind, and culture while remaining invariant under changes of substrate.
The Modest Claim
Being Made
None of this is to claim that science has proven metaphysical structuralism but in fact something more pragmatic: Beginning with structure as the primitive assumption is no longer eccentric. It is increasingly well-supported by empirical work and it generates a coherent, fertile ontology with unusual unifying power across domains.
No rival primitive currently offers comparable reach and coherence. For an artistic practice this matters deeply, because artists have always worked at the level of pattern, relation, rhythm, tension and transformation. The science is catching up to what makers have intuitively known.
Closing
The assumption that reality is fundamentally structural is therefore not dogma. It is a deliberately chosen generative hypothesis. Its legitimacy rests not on final proof but on the continued illumination and creative possibilities it opens.
If it keeps bearing fruit across physics, biology, cognition, technology and art, we keep it.
If better evidence or a more powerful primitive appears, we revise or discard it.
This is the foundation the rest of the project builds upon. I’ve included the key names so the reader can explore them directly.
Sources / Further Reading
- Worrall, J. (1989). “Structural Realism: The Best of Both Worlds?” Dialectica, 43, 99–124.
- Ladyman, J. (1998). “What is Structural Realism?” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 29(3), 409–424.
- Ladyman, J., Ross, D., Spurrett, D. & Collier, J. (2007). Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized. Oxford University Press.
- French, S. (2014). The Structure of the World: Metaphysics and Representation. Oxford University Press.
- Wheeler, J. A. (1990). “Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links.”
- Tegmark, M. (2008). “The Mathematical Universe.” Foundations of Physics, 38, 101–150.
- Rovelli, C. (1996). “Relational Quantum Mechanics.” International Journal of Theoretical Physics, 35, 1637–1678.
- Arkani-Hamed, N. & Trnka, J. (2014). “The Amplituhedron.” Journal of High Energy Physics, 2014(10), 30.
- Levin, M. & Martyniuk, C. J. (2018), “The Bioelectric Code: An Ancient Computational Medium for Dynamic Control of Growth and Form.” BioSystems 164, 76–93. Levin Lab — Bioelectricity publications.
- Hoffman, D. D., Singh, M. & Prakash, C. (2015). “The Interface Theory of Perception.” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 22, 1480–1506.
- Wiener, N. (1948). Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. MIT Press.
- Shannon, C. E. (1948). “A Mathematical Theory of Communication.” Bell System Technical Journal, 27.