The Theory

The full read-through, in one continuous arc — Foundations, the Asymmetric Epistemic Principle, and Space, Time, Mass, and Energy. v0.6 vocabulary throughout. For per-section reading, jump to Foundations, Spacetime, or Epistemic Asymmetry.

0. Thesis

Everything that exists is made of one substance — interaction — and can be explained by one phenomenon: the interaction script.

Reality is not made of things that occasionally interact. It is made of interactions, and "things" (agents, Forms, objects, selves) are derivative — they are stable patterns within the interaction substrate.

This is a single-primitive ontology. The remainder of the theory is the structural unfolding of what an interaction is and what follows from taking it as the only real thing.

1. The Interaction (the atom of reality)

An interaction is an atomic structure consisting of six items:

1. Pole A — the mark-leaver.
2. Pole B — the aware one.
3. Local space — intrinsic to this interaction. Not borrowed from any backdrop.
4. Local time — intrinsic to this interaction. Zero-duration from outside, full internal duration from inside.
5. Mark — a bit set by A and delivered to B. Moved, never copied.
6. Propagation — the internal process by which the mark is carried from A, through the substrate, to B (called Computation before v0.13).

The script

Inside every interaction, the same script runs:

Agent A leaves a Mark upon the local space; after some local time, Agent B becomes aware of the Mark.

Until B becomes aware, the interaction does not exist. There is no mark in limbo, no half-event waiting to be completed. The whole 6-tuple comes into being only at the moment of awareness.

Awareness, not detection

The receiving pole's act is called awareness, not detection. "Detection" would imply that B interacts with the mark, which would launch an infinite regress. Awareness is primitive and non-interactional. It is constitutive of the interaction, not antecedent to it.

Time is encapsulated

There is no external time. From the outside (if such a view existed), every interaction is a zero-duration atomic event. Time exists only inside an interaction, as the duration between A's mark-leaving and B's awareness — and only relative to that interaction's interior.

Two poles, exactly

Every interaction has exactly two poles. This is currently taken as axiomatic; a deeper justification is owed.

2. Agents

Agents do not exist as a separate primitive. They are derivative.

• Retrospectively, an agent is a bundle / sum of pole-positions across many interactions.
• Prospectively, an agent is a potential for further interactions.
• Intrinsically, the two-pole structure is a feature of each interaction, not a sign of two free-standing things existing prior to it.

Agent identity (across interactions)

Two pole-positions belong to the same agent iff there is one awareness that ties them together. Identity is structural — given by shared awareness threading through multiple interactions.

Two interactions belong to the same agent iff that agent is aware of both of them.

Self-action

An agent maintains itself through Action (§8). At level n, that self-maintenance is realized as a coordinated pattern of inter-component interactions at level n−1. The cell maintains itself because its organelles inter-act; organelles because their molecules do; molecules because their atoms do; atoms because their constituent Mass-interactions do.

3. Propagation

A Propagation is the internal process of an interaction. The HOW. (Revised in v0.13 — formerly "Computation"; retired because the mark is not computed.)

• The mark is a bit set by the agent at pole A. The interaction does not compute it; it carries it: down through A's sub-agents to Mass, across the floor — where the only elementary interactions happen — and up through B's sub-agents to the aware pole. Down, across, up: that path is the interior.
• The mark-stack. A sub-interaction carries all its parents' marks along with its own — a simple FILO stack: pushed on the way down, popped (fit to each shell's aware pole) on the way up. The interaction's own mark is set first, so it is delivered last, to the top awareness, when the delivery completes — and the completed delivery is the interaction's existence. The stack is always empty at that moment: the actual world never contains one.
• The mark says only: "agent B — I, agent A, exist." Complexity arises not from any mark's content but from time-and-space variance — when and where many existence-bits land.
• Moved, never copied. The bit B becomes aware of is the bit A set, carried through the substrate, leaving no copies.
• Carrying is not awareness. Sub-agents carry ancestral marks as opaque cargo; only the aware pole a layer is addressed to can read it.
• A Propagation is internal to an interaction; it has no existence outside one, and is not a Form, not a Protocol, not a tier.

Examples

• The internal physical process by which two protons exchange charge: the Propagation of a proton–proton interaction.
• The chain neuron→vocal cord→air→ear→neuron when one human speaks to another: the Propagation of a human-to-human interaction — the speaker's bit carried down to molecular collisions in the air and back up to the listener's awareness.
• The whole of cosmic history: the Propagation of the One Interaction.

Physics, redefined

Physics is the science of Propagations. Each discipline reverse-engineers the propagation path of some class of interactions: electromagnetism the proton–proton path; neuroscience the neuron-chain path; cosmology the path of the One Interaction.

4. Mass

Mass is the atomic, leaf-level interaction. It is the origin of all interactions in the sense that every chain of nesting terminates downward in a Mass-interaction. All higher interactions are structured compositions of Mass.

• Mass-interactions have no sub-interactions (no Propagation below them — at the floor, the mark moves directly, Mass to Mass).
• A Mass-interaction lacks a local agent A — a leaf has nothing below it to constitute a mark-leaver. Its A-slot is filled globally: the Source is the agent A of every Mass-interaction (v0.14). One Source ⇒ the floor is one connected family, by shared agency — one world.
• Their mark is primitive — a non-decomposable unit of information. The simplest fact of distinction: that which separates what is in existence from what is not.
• Mass is the substance out of which all higher structure is built.

This deliberately resonates with the physical concept of mass: that which has substance, weight, irreducible presence.

5. The One Interaction (the universe)

The universe is one interaction. It is the root of the tree of interactions.

• The Big Bang is the moment of A's mark-leaving.
• The end of the universe (whenever and however it happens) is B's becoming-aware.
• All of cosmic history is the internal time and Propagation of this single interaction.
• All space, time, and mass we observe were "introduced at the Big Bang" — they came into being as the interior of the One Interaction.

From outside (a view we do not have), the universe is a zero-duration event. From inside (the only view we have), it is everything we can observe.

This makes a serious metaphysical commitment: the mark of the One Interaction is forever hidden from us. We are inside the Propagation — we carry its mark in every stack we propagate, unread (carrying is not awareness). We cannot see the mark or the awareness that will receive it.

6. The structure: a rooted tree of interactions

The set of all interactions forms a rooted tree:

• Each interaction has exactly one parent — the interaction whose Propagation it is part of.
• An interaction's local spacetime is nested inside its parent's local spacetime.
• The root is the One Interaction.
• The leaves are Mass-interactions.

This tree is the Propagation dimension of the theory: it captures interactions-inside-interactions all the way from the One Interaction down to atomic Mass — the axis along which marks are pushed down and popped up.

There is no shared, universal spacetime. The reason our physics has a spacetime to work with is that everything we can observe is nested inside one common ancestor — the One Interaction — and we live in its interior. Two interactions have a spatial or temporal relation to each other only via a common ancestor's interior.

Sensed time is composite

We are sub-Forms of many parent interactions at once (human-level, cellular, molecular, atomic, ultimately the One). Each parent has its own local time. Our sensed time is a synthesis of all of them. This explains multiscale time-feel, subjective time dilation, and why time can feel continuous despite no universal time existing.

7. Form, Crystallization, and the cross-level asymmetry

A Form is a constituted agent.

Form-constitution rule. Form_N is the agent that emerges when many alike Form_{N−1} interact according to a Protocol_N.

This is recursive. At the bottom (N = 1), the constituents are atomic Mass-interactions. At every level above, the constitution is the same: alike sub-Forms binding into a higher Form by following a Protocol specific to that level. A cell is constituted by molecules and organelles via biochemical Protocols. A human is constituted by cells via cellular signaling Protocols. A society is constituted by humans via social Protocols.

A Form is not a manifestation of a Propagation. Propagations live inside individual interactions. A Form is ever-changing, not fixed (v0.14): it is categorized — not strictly identified — by its Protocol-profile, the set of Protocols it is manifesting. A Form is something different: a pattern across many interactions, held together by a Protocol.

Solidification and Crystallization

• Solidification — when a Form's autopoietic loop becomes self-reinforcing enough to resist the dissolution-tendency of the substrate. The Form becomes a stable attractor.
• Crystallization — the process by which the structurally-isomorphic lower-level patterns of alike Forms stabilize into a regular medium, and by which the higher-order Protocol regularities emerge over that medium.

The genealogy of a Protocol

A Protocol between alike Forms is established via the lower-complexity interactions those Forms share.

Two Forms each interact with various lower-complexity forms. When their lower-level interaction patterns are structurally isomorphic, the shared interactions can serve as a medium for the higher Forms to interact through. Crystallization stabilizes that medium and lets a higher-order regularity emerge over it. The stabilized regularity is the Protocol. The Protocol is emergent over its substrate (uses it as medium but carries structure of its own — language is not in the air-molecule physics). The recursion bottoms out at Mass: Protocol_1 is primitive; everything above it is genealogically built.

Alikeness

Two Forms are alike iff their interactions with lower-complexity forms are structurally isomorphic.

Same kind of structure performing the same kind of role. Two humans are alike not because they share specific ear-cells, but because their ears, vocal cords, and constituent Forms are isomorphic Forms doing isomorphic work. Definition is non-circular: alikeness at level N is grounded in structural isomorphism at level N−1; at level 1 alikeness is primitive.

Cross-level interaction asymmetry

The picture is not sterile or symmetric. Three different relations hold across complexity levels:

Consequence: interactions with lower-complexity Forms are vastly more numerous than same-level interactions. A human conducts trillions of cell-level and molecule-level interactions per second; far fewer human-to-human interactions per day. The asymmetry is two-axis: direction (down → interaction; up → constitution) and frequency (down ≫ same-level).

8. Action

Action is the way a Form maintains its own existence.

Not a manifestation, an output, or a side-effect. Action is autopoiesis enacted. Without Action, the Form does not persist — it dissolves back into the interaction substrate.

Action is not evidence of the Form's existence. Action is the Form's existence.

Action as filter on interaction-potential

Actions are a filter over the interaction-potential.

The substrate (the "abyss of randomness") is the space of potential interactions. Without filtering, this potential diffuses toward maximum disorder. A Form's actions filter this potential — biasing which interactions occur, privileging the patterns that constitute the Form, in ways that reproduce the Form's existence.

The autopoietic loop

The Form's persistence is a closed loop:

A Form persists iff this loop closes on itself. This is autopoiesis generalized to all of reality.

Three primary concepts, two structural relations

The earlier four-tier hierarchy Interaction → Protocol → Form → Action was wrong: it conflated the inside of an interaction (the Propagation, then called Computation) with the constitution of a Form (Protocol). v0.3 replaces it with three primary concepts (Interaction, Form, Action) and two structural relations (Propagation inside an interaction; Protocol between alike Forms). No single ladder.

9. The two opposing tendencies

Every Form lives in the balance between two real tendencies built into the substrate:

1. Decay — disorder, data loss, dissolution. The default.
2. Emergence — patterns spontaneously crystallize from large numbers of chaotic interactions.

A Form is a local stable balance between these two: its autopoietic loop generates new structure (emergence) faster than dissolution erodes it (decay).

A first-pass dynamic equation:

Forms exist at stable fixed points where E = D. Formalizing this balance is the central mathematical task of the theory.

10. Existence criteria

Descartes had cogito ergo sum. The Interaction Theory's parallel is ago ergo sum — I act, therefore I am. v0.3 sharpens: Action is not evidence of existence; Action is the existence. Stop acting, and the Form dissolves back into the abyss of potential.

11. Open questions

The skeleton above is conceptually complete enough to begin formalizing. The live mathematical/conceptual questions:

1. The primitive mark alphabet. What does a Mass-interaction's mark consist of?
2. The path-weighting rule (v0.13). The old “how do children's marks aggregate” is dissolved — the mark is carried, not computed. The live question: on the potential stratum many candidate floor-paths coexist; what weights them? (This is where superposition lives.)
3. The geometry of nested local spacetimes.
4. Why exactly two poles?
5. The top of the tree. What supplies the One Interaction's spacetime?
6. Formalizing the decay/emergence balance.
7. The interaction-potential as a mathematical object.
8. The Protocol as a mathematical object. v0.4: a constraint/grammar over the space of lower-level interaction patterns. Specific algebraic structure still open.
9. The "alikeness" relation, formally. v0.4: structural isomorphism of lower-level interaction patterns. Choice of "isomorphism" still open.
10. The primitive Protocol_1. The bare coupling between alike Mass-interactions cannot be genealogically derived. (New in v0.4.)
11. Cross-references with established frameworks — Whitehead, Rovelli, Sorkin, Wheeler, Maturana–Varela, Prigogine, Peirce.

12. The Asymmetric Epistemic Principle

An epistemological consequence of the structural ontology above: every agent is a hub with one decipherable interior and many indecipherable exteriors. In v0.3, sharpened by a parallel ontological asymmetry: an agent cannot interact with the higher Forms it participates in, only be part of them.

An agent has access to its sub-interactions but not to the parent interactions in which it participates. Downward decipherment is possible. Upward decipherment is impossible in principle, only inferential.

This is not a contingent limit. It follows structurally. A Propagation is the internal process of an interaction, and deciphering it requires the parent's interior view — seeing all sub-interactions arrayed in the parent's local spacetime. An agent participating in a parent occupies a pole, not a vantage above. From a pole, only the agent's own subtree is visible. The parent's Propagation, of which the agent's own contribution is just one piece, is not. (v0.13 makes this mechanical: the agent carries the parent's marks but cannot read them — carrying is not awareness.)

Stepping "outside" a parent would require having no parent. Every agent has parents (the One Interaction at minimum). Therefore no agent ever achieves the outside view.

13. The hub structure of every agent

Each agent is a hub with two structural directions:

The agent has one interior, many exteriors. The one interior gives it the experience of being a unified self. The many exteriors are why it can never know its full context — and never act upon it.

A cell is simultaneously part of the tissue, the organ, the blood-flow, the signaling cascade, the body's energy budget — each a different parent interaction running its own Propagation. None of them is decipherable from the cell's vantage; none of them can be interacted with from inside.

14. Partial upward access

The principle does not say agents are blind to upward context. Several modes of partial access exist:

• Inferential traces — an agent can detect that it is inside a larger context without decoding the Propagations of that context. We know we are on Earth, in a solar system, in a galaxy. We do not know the Propagations those larger Forms are running.
• Statistical regularities — laws, correlations, patterns that are the parent Propagation's footprint as it passes through the agent. Physical laws are the inferable shadow of the One Interaction's Propagation; the Propagation itself is not.
• Phenomenology of being-part-of-something — the mystical, religious, or systems-thinking intuition that we participate in larger wholes is, on this theory, structurally accurate. It is the agent registering that it has upward axes without being able to read or act through them.

Full Propagation decipherment upward is impossible. Inferential glimpses are not.

15. Consequences

• The mark of the One Interaction is hidden from us by construction. We will never see what mark is being computed or what awareness will receive it.
• Physics has a horizon. Every law we discover is a regularity inside the One Interaction's Propagation. The Propagation as a whole is the totality those laws are local features of, and we cannot stand outside it.
• Scientific progress is asymmetric. Decomposition (looking down) yields full understanding in principle. Composition / context (looking up) yields only models, signatures, inferences. This asymmetry is permanent.
• The mystic and the scientist are doing complementary moves. The scientist deciphers downward; the mystic apprehends (without fully decoding) upward. Both are responding to real structure, just at opposite axes of the hub.
• (v0.3) The asymmetry is not only epistemic but practical: an agent cannot meaningfully act on the higher Forms it participates in. Its actions feed into them as constitutive contributions, not as targeted inputs. There is no agentive lever pointing upward.

16. Space, time, and mass

The theory's account of spacetime (v0.5). Condensed here; the full treatment carries the worked examples and the explicit map to special relativity. Claims marked [bridge] are conjectured analogies to physics — leads, not derivations.

The apparent circularity in time (a child's "when" sits inside its parent, yet the parent only is once its children complete) dissolves once encapsulation is applied between levels: from a parent's interior, each child is a zero-duration point; the child's own rich duration is invisible above. So a child never shares the parent's clock — it receives only a position in the parent's ordering. Each level manufactures its own time, fresh, from the level below.

Time is the order of succession of a parent's children's completions (read upward). Space is the order of their coexistence — the room granted for them to be many at once (allocated downward).

Both are readings of one structure — the parent's populated interior — along two axes. Time flows up (its content is sourced from the children's completions); space flows down (its container is granted by the parent). [bridge] Opposite directions along one relation yield opposite sign in a combined measure — the Lorentzian signature ds² = −c²dt² + dx² + dy² + dz². Time is 1-dimensional because each interaction has exactly one awareness-pole, so a parent reads exactly one completion-sequence.

[bridge] An agent spends a fixed interaction-throughput (= c) split between completion (→ time) and propagation (→ space). A photon spends all of it on propagation — no internal time, moves at c (it is a mark mid-flight, an interaction not yet complete). A resting mass spends all of it on completion — maximal aging, no motion. The split is the angle (rapidity); re-splitting it is a Lorentz boost, and the consequent slow-down of completion is time dilation.

Mass is ongoing/bound interaction — confirmed across physics (composite mass = binding energy; elementary mass = Higgs coupling). And the budget splits relative to the parent interior the agent is embedded in, never absolutely: a reference frame is a parent interaction's interior, so relativity's "no absolute frame" falls out of the nesting structure.

Energy (v0.6) completes the picture: it is the rate at which a Form completes the interactions that maintain it — the dynamic measure of bound interaction, where mass is the static measure; equivalently, the rate of Action. Rest energy (mc²) is the cost of existing against decay. Because mass was defined as ongoing interaction and "ongoing" is already a rate, E = mc² is nearly definitional: mass and energy are one substance, counted versus timed. See the full page for momentum, conservation, and the worked examples.

This is the v0.6 read-through. Continues to evolve. Changelogs in 02–05 in the project repo.