The unfolding proceeds step by step from pure distinction. From the bare act of distinction, through a sequence of steps, there arise structures that formal mathematics usually takes as already given: composition, objects and morphisms, measure, geometry, forms.
The work follows a simple rhythm. There is an elementary state — a state of rest, in which distinctions are present but no longer distinguish. From it, a bare distinction is put forward — a new act, still without content. It clothes itself in the minimal structure it is able to hold. A new structure arises. It exhausts itself and itself becomes an elementary state for the next step. And the rhythm repeats.
This is the same work as in the article Ontology from a Simple Gesture. The unfolding is difficult to grasp in a single pass — it is better understood through iterations from different points, where each pass illuminates what the previous one left half-shadowed. Here the same work is taken through another focus and deepened in the places where composition, measure, geometry, and forms arise from distinction. It is the same rhythm of the work of distinction, the same movement through elementary states and bare distinction, simply followed with different emphases on particular steps.
This unfolding does not claim to be a formal system. It works at a lower level — it describes how formal systems may arise. It is close to the dialectical line of Hegel and Schelling, but carried out in a more contemporary language, without strong attachment to historical formulations.
The unfolding reaches the level of self-preserving forms. What happens next — the encounter of forms, the formal constructions for working with all this — is left for a separate discussion.
Distinction as Primary Activity
Let us begin with what cannot be defined.
Distinction is the structure of thinking itself. It is not an operation that thinking performs on given material, but the very mode of its work. Distinction cannot be defined through something more fundamental, because any definition already works through distinction.
This resembles situations known from the history of philosophy. Being in Heidegger is not defined through something else, because any definition already presupposes an understanding of being. Consciousness in Descartes is not derived from other concepts — it stands as a primary certainty. Distinction works in the same way. It does not require a definition — it requires an indication of its status.
What matters is this: in distinction itself, at the limit of abstraction, several things coincide which, in more developed thinking, become different concepts. Distinction, negation, choice, movement — at the foundational level, they are one. To distinguish means at once to negate unity, to choose one from another, to perform a movement of thought. These aspects separate later, in more saturated phases of the work.
Therefore, when we speak of distinction as primary activity, this is not a hidden definition through other concepts. It is an indication: every work of thought is a form of this activity.
As long as distinction works "outwardly" — distinguishing something from something — it has no internal structure of its own: all its work goes into what is distinguished. Internal structure appears only when the work of distinction turns back onto the work itself — when distinction begins to distinguish itself. This is the moment from which the unfolding begins.
Elementary State and Bare Distinction
When pure distinctions remain unconnected with one another, or when they are equalized to the point where the difference between them loses its force, there arises what we call an elementary state.
An elementary state is not emptiness and not the absence of distinctions. It is a state of rest in which distinctions formally exist, but their distinguishing force has been exhausted.
It resembles a state of matter in which all particles are evenly distributed and move chaotically. Differences exist, but they do not work as distinguishing differences, because there is no order that would give them direction. The same holds for the elementary state of distinctions: it is rich in material, but poor in the structure of work.
In the elementary state, distinction enters rest. Not because nothing is happening, but because what is happening no longer distinguishes further. The work of distinction itself has reached its limit at the current level.
And then a new distinction is put forward. Not because some external force puts it forward, but because at the foundation everything is distinction, and rest is not the final point. Everything is the movement of distinction, and the rest of the elementary state is only its local fading, from which it inevitably resumes in a new form.
Distinction does not find something new in ready-made material. In the elementary state, everything has already been equalized, and further distinction within it is impossible. Distinction puts itself forward from the elementary state on its own — against it. This is bare distinction.
Bare distinction is at first without content. It is only an act, one that does not yet have structure. In order for us to hold it in view at all, it must clothe itself in structure — or, more precisely, we must see it as clothed in structure. But not in an arbitrary one: we see it in the poorest structure available, according to the principle of minimality. In the one that burdens the process least with something external to it.
The process of distinction itself proceeds purely. At the level of distinction as such, there is neither clothing nor material into which it clothes itself. Distinction works as the pure structure of movement, and this is sufficient for its work.
Clothing is already our way of understanding the process. We are late forms in this unfolding, self-preserving forms with our own established perception. When we try to grasp what happens at early stages, we do this through that perception, through the forms familiar to us. We project these forms onto the process of distinction so that it becomes understandable in our terms. What we call the clothing of bare distinction is a property of our view, not a property of the process itself. The process itself does not need clothing and proceeds independently of how we project it.
This concerns not only the clothing of bare distinction. The unfolding itself as a sequence of named stages — proto-quantity, non-indifference, transfer, waves, measure — is already our way of seeing. The process itself is nameless. It does not pass through stages as through steps that exist in it as such. It is we who, trying to find something to lean on in order to hold what is happening in view at all, distribute names-categories and, through this distribution, build what appears to us as an unfolding.
This does not mean that the unfolding is arbitrary. Names are not attached randomly — they are chosen so as to hold, in the poorest possible way, what is actually being distinguished in the process. The principle of minimality works here as well. But the names remain our supports, not its steps.
This is important to keep in mind. The confusion of the two levels — the process itself and our unfolding of it into named stages — is the main source of errors in this work.
Proto-Quantity
Bare distinction, put forward from the elementary state of pure distinctions, clothes itself in the poorest difference that can be built from the available material. This is the difference between pure distinctions that cease to be indifferent to one another. Not quantitative difference in the ordinary sense, not object-based difference, but difference between distinctions as such.
This is the first structure, and we may call it proto-quantity. Not because it is already quantity, but because it is the place from which quantity, in the developed form in which we usually know it, may later arise. Proto-quantity is fertile ground: not yet the quantity of objects, but already a primary distinction between distinctions.
Here we notice something unusual. It seems that quantity either exists or does not — quantity is quantity, so what could "proto-quantity" mean? But this is our habit, coming from the fact that we see categories already in their mature, unfolded form. In reality, every category has a history of development beneath it. Even one as seemingly pure as quantity passes through stages — from difference between distinctions as such to the quantity of objects that we habitually count as units. The prefix "proto" marks these early stages, in which the future content of the category is only being outlined, while the category itself, in the full sense, is not yet there.
The early stages of the unfolding are poor in content. This is not a flaw — it is their nature: they operate at a level where content has not yet arisen. Later stages are richer, and the content familiar to us operates in them. Between them there is a gradient of developedness, and this matters. Each stage has its own level of contentfulness, and it is a mistake to project this level directly onto other stages.
Therefore we call the early structures in this unfolding with the prefix "proto": proto-quantity, proto-transfer, proto-waves, proto-geometry. This indicates that we are dealing with stages of hints of principles, not with principles in their developed form. An attempt to formalize proto-forms in the usual way misses the gradient of contentfulness and projects the expectations of later stages onto earlier ones.
In that case, an apparatus built for a mature category is transferred onto a stage where this category does not yet exist in the full sense, and the theory begins to work on material that does not contain what the theory is trying to find in it. This is why keeping the categorial tree in view is not a philosophical subtlety, but a working requirement. Without it, inquiry loses the distinction between what is actually present in the material and what we bring into it through our habitual view.
Thus, the emergence of proto-quantity shows an important feature of the unfolding. Each step generates new material, and this material becomes an elementary state for the next step. From the elementary state of pure distinctions, bare distinction was put forward and clothed itself in proto-quantity. Now proto-quantity itself becomes an elementary state. In it, distinctions are equalized again, and a new rest sets in.
One more thing should be recalled. An elementary state is not a single substrate lying beneath the whole unfolding as primary matter. It is a mode into which any stage enters when its work is exhausted. Each stage has its own elementary state: pure distinctions have one, proto-quantity another, non-indifference a third. The word "elementary" does not refer to the foundation of being, but to the moment of rest reached by the work of distinction at each step. When we say that proto-quantity becomes an elementary state, this is what we mean: it reaches its rest, its exhaustion, from which the next bare distinction is put forward.
And from this new rest of the elementary state, the next bare distinction is put forward. This is the basic rhythm of the unfolding. It works at every stage, because distinction itself is movement, and every rest within it is temporary.
Non-Indifference
From the elementary state of proto-quantity, in which distinctions between distinctions work but are again equalized, the next bare distinction is put forward. It clothes itself in the poorest possible continuation — in the assertion that one becomes non-indifferent to another.
Non-indifference here simply means that distinctions cease to leave one another untouched — that one begins to matter for another, in some sense not yet specified.
This is the first moment when the work of relation arises between distinctions. Not merely the presence of one and another, but the fact that one works upon another, or for another, or against another. Link, edge, separateness, contact — all these words from ordinary language are too loaded, too full of content, to be projected here. It is more precise to use a formal designation and to speak of non-indifference as the work of this stage.
At this stage, each distinction is connected with every other through one and the same non-indifference. A complete connectedness arises, in which all elements are equally non-indifferent to one another. This is a symmetrical relation — there is no difference between the non-indifference of A to B and the non-indifference of B to A. And there is no direction, because direction is already a distinction that will appear only later.
In this complete connectedness with homogeneous relations, an interesting property arises. The transition from A to B and from B to C is indistinguishable from the transition from A directly to C. All relations are the same, so the intermediate step adds nothing to the direct relation. This is what, in formal mathematics, works as composition — the summing of sequential transitions into one direct transition.
Composition here arises not as an introduced law, but as a structural consequence of the homogeneity of relations. If all relations are identical, their sequence is indistinguishable from a direct relation. This is a natural result of the stage, not an additional axiom.
It should be noted: composition works at this stage because there are no richer distinctions that could disrupt it. As soon as distinctions appear over non-indifference, composition will cease to work without taking them into account. The stages of the unfolding are connected — each next stage may disrupt properties that worked in the previous one, and only special conditions allow these properties to be preserved.
Modes of Non-Indifference
At the previous stage, all relations were the same. But this homogeneity itself becomes an elementary state, and from it the next bare distinction is put forward. It clothes itself in the poorest continuation — in a difference between relations. Relations cease to be identical. Modes of non-indifference arise.
These modes can be interpreted in different ways. Distance — relations differ by strength or proximity. Force — relations of different intensity. Direction — the relation from A to B differs from the relation from B to A. All these interpretations are possible, and they represent different concrete forms of one structure: difference between relations. But they are more like examples, since both distance and force are still very contentful and will truly appear much later. They work as analogies, showing what happens with the abstract growth of the contentfulness of distinction.
We have familiar forms through which we perceive the world — graphs, links, objects, relations. When we encounter an abstract stage, we are tempted to clothe it in these familiar forms. This is a simplification and an error. Familiar forms carry many hidden distinctions that have already been made, but that have not yet arisen at the early stages of the unfolding. To apply them to early stages is to project onto them what is not yet there.
To repeat: this is precisely why we use the prefix "proto." This is not the same stage as in familiar forms, but a hint of a principle that has not yet taken shape as a principle. An attempt to begin formalizing and rigidly defining proto-forms will lead to errors.
Composition, which worked at the previous stage as a natural consequence of homogeneity, now generally ceases to work. If relations are different, the path from A through B to C gives something different from the direct path from A to C. The sum of two sides of a triangle is generally not equal to the third. Composition now works only under special conditions — when the modes are coordinated, or when a particular mode defines a particular law of composition.
Here we see how the unfolding becomes richer, and how early properties are preserved or disrupted. Composition as elementary indistinguishability at the previous stage becomes composition as a conditional operation at the stage of modes. The law of composition is not destroyed, but it requires attention to the mode in which it is applied.
This point is important for formal approaches. If these corrections are not taken into account, theories become overly general. Composition as an abstraction continues to work in everything that unfolds further, but precisely as an abstraction, not as concrete composition without corrections. In formal mathematics, there are different kinds of categories with different laws of composition — not one universal category with one universal composition.
Degeneration and Choice
At the stage of modes of non-indifference, relations differ. And here a natural question arises: what happens at the limit?
A relation may become so strong that it becomes indistinguishable from complete fusion. Or so weak that it becomes indistinguishable from the absence of relation. In both cases, at the limit, the relation ceases to work as a relation.
This is what is called degeneration. Not in the sense that something degrades, but in the sense that, at the limit, the difference between relations disappears — the extreme cases cease to be relations continuing the spectrum and become something else. Speaking here of magnitude is imprecise, because there is no metric yet. It is more precise to speak of degeneration as a structural phenomenon: at the limit, a relation ceases to work as a distinction.
One can regard degeneration as part of the same spectrum of modes — as extreme points of a continuous series, where relations gradually become stronger or weaker and degenerate at the limits. Or one can see here a new distinction: the difference between relations that work and relations that do not work. Not a degree, but a choice between two states.
The second path is structurally richer, and the unfolding follows it. When this choice operates, what arises is no longer a flat layer with relations of different strengths, but a layer with proto-densifications and proto-sparse regions. Densifications are where relations are distinguished as working. Sparse regions are where relations are distinguished as not working.
Densifications and sparse regions are phenomena that arise only when three distinctions work together at once.
The first is non-indifference itself, relation as such. Without it, there is nothing from which a densification can be composed. The second is the mode of non-indifference, the capacity of relations to differ. Without it, all relations are identical, and no densification is possible. The third is choice, the difference between working and non-working relations. Without it, relations merely differ by strength, without any marked regions.
A densification arises only when all three operate simultaneously. Remove any one of them, and the phenomenon disappears.
This shows that the unfolding is not arranged as a simple sequence of homogeneous layers, each adding one distinction. At some stages, phenomena arise that are held by several distinctions working together at once.
Proto-Transfer and Transfer
At the stage with densifications and sparse regions, the work of distinction sooner or later reaches rest. This stage can be developed in different directions, but all of them give variants within one layer. To move further along what can be called the main line, a bare distinction must be put forward from this elementary state.
The next distinction is connected with asymmetry. Until now, non-indifference has been symmetrical: A is non-indifferent to B in the same way that B is non-indifferent to A. The distinction that is now put forward adds asymmetry. The relation from A to B becomes different from the relation from B to A.
This is proto-transfer — the structural moment in which the future possibility of transfer is outlined, although there is not yet any content that would be transferred.
By its nature, proto-transfer is the direction of the putting-forward of difference from something to something. It is not the transfer of a ready-made object, but the transfer of the act of distinction itself. Attention moves from A to B, and this directedness is itself a distinction.
Transfer in the more familiar sense arises from proto-transfer through an important shift — here, locality is outlined for the first time.
Proto-transfer was the movement of distinction from something to something, and what was transferred in this movement was distinction itself. But at some point distinction passes into a difference with itself — it separates from itself something as what is transferred. This is the first division into the distinguishing and the distinguished. Here the germ of locality is outlined: for the first time, a boundary appears between what transfers and what is transferred.
The transferred receives a mark — This. The mark is still abstract, without content: only that it is not distinction itself, but something to which distinction points. Later we will see that distinction, conditioned by the stage of locality, "forgets" that it transfers itself, and distinguishes this as something separate from itself.
Thus arises the abstract transfer of an abstract pointer — the first stage at which something is outlined that much later will unfold into full locality as a place held separately from that which holds it.
The Elementary State of Transmission and Qualitative States
When transfer works at the stage with densifications, sparse regions, and directions, a rich dynamics of transmission arises. This transfer does not necessarily work from neighbor to neighbor — the structure of connectedness at this stage is not flat, and transmissions may encompass many proto-elements at once.
Transmissions of states fill the structure, and a new rest quickly arises — the elementary state of transmission. From it, the next bare distinction is put forward.
This distinction clothes itself in the distinction of This itself, of what is transmitted. Until now, This was an abstract pointer, indifferent to content. Now differences arise within This, and its new content appears — proto-states that can be transmitted.
Waves
If we project what has been described onto familiar forms — inevitably profaning it, but this is what we do in order to support intuition at least somehow through the familiar — then proto-states, when transmitted through transfer, form proto-waves.
If proto-states are not distinguished from one another, waves inevitably merge. If they are distinguished, they pass through one another without mixing, or interact according to rules that depend on more developed differences between them.
An elementary state of proto-waves arises. A multitude of waves passing through the structure forms complex patterns. This elementary state is rich: the patterns are diverse, never fully repeat, and yet obey certain regularities.
The word "wave" here works as a short name for the structure of differences that arises in the transmission of proto-states. This is not the wave we know from physics — it is a structure at a much earlier level of the unfolding, before matter, medium, and space in the familiar sense have appeared. When we later say that "waves known to physics" manifest in the physical world, this does not mean that we have returned to the same thing. A physical wave is a concrete case of the same structure, unfolded in the physical focus. And in this focus it receives all the traits familiar to us — medium, propagation speed, wavelength. But at the stage of proto-waves none of this exists yet — there is only the structure of transmission of proto-states, which in later focuses will unfold into different concrete kinds of waves.
The elementary state of waves is interesting because its properties manifest everywhere. In the physical world, these are waves known to physics. But abstract wave phenomena — periodicity, superposition, interference, resonance — also manifest in social processes, information systems, and psychic dynamics. They arise from the general elementary state of waves at the abstract level.
This gives one more methodological point. The unfolding proceeds fundamentally, and its stages are not tied to any one concrete domain of reality. In different focuses, one and the same stage appears as different reality — physical, informational, social. This means that the basic unfolding works as a general structure beneath which different concrete worlds can unfold.
Invariants, Measure, Proto-Geometry
The elementary state of waves, with all its richness, itself reaches rest. A multitude of patterns forms something limited within richness — there is everything, and there is nothing new. From this rest, the next bare distinction is put forward.
At the previous stages, the elementary state was relatively clear — one parameter exhausted into rest. Here it is more complex. It is not one parameter, but a multitude of parameters forming a single medium. To put forward a distinction directly from such an elementary state is very difficult. One must understand where the true rest of the system lies, when the very concept of system has not yet arisen, and there are only proto-systemic moments.
Our limited perception is forced to use a kind of trick: first to distinguish degenerations as stabilities within richness, to search for sub-states inside the general elementary state, and to gather these sub-states into the general one. Thus the elementary state is determined through sub-states, because grasping its rest directly is very difficult, and is usually connected with valuable research and discoveries.
So before putting forward a contentful distinction at such a stage, we can no longer put it forward from an explicit rest, and are forced to make a preliminary step: the discovery of this rest in a form acceptable for further work.
Thus we begin the search for invariants. First, concentration on one stable pattern. Then comparison with another. The search for what is common between them — comparability.
Comparability does not arise from nothing. In order for something to be comparable with another, or more precisely, non-distinguishable from another, there must be extensity — a medium in which comparison can unfold. Without it, two distinctions remain isolated from one another, and the question of their comparability does not even make sense.
This extensity in our unfolding is what we call a quantum. Not in the physical sense of a quantum, but in a more fundamental sense — as a minimal distinguishable unit of extensity through which comparability becomes possible at all. From a certain stage onward, this gives the unfolding a fundamental discreteness, not as an added property, but as the condition of possibility of comparison. Comparability, measure, invariants — all this works only in a medium that has a quantum nature in this sense.
Comparability gives a new structure. From it, through distinction within comparability, measure arises — a way of singular comparison. A differs from B by this much. From measure, through distinction within measure itself, a definite measure arises — a concrete kind of comparison. From stable relations of measures arises an order of measures. From the order of measures arises something we may provisionally call proto-geometry.
In fact, this is a system of measures forming an order of orientation. It arises when measure ceases to be a singular comparison and becomes a medium of orientation. It is no longer "A differs from B by this much," but "A, B, C, D are arranged in a certain order of differences." Geometrical meanings appear — between, beside, farther, nearer, center, periphery, boundary, region, direction, contour.
These meanings existed earlier as well — in a very abstract form. At the stage of modes of non-indifference, something like proto-distance was already at work. But there it was poor, without order and without a medium of orientation. At the stage of proto-geometry, it receives a developed form through measure and its order.
Here we also see the moment of repetition of forms that were already passed through earlier in a more abstract form — although in fact, earlier these were not even forms, but rather intuitions. Reality is filled with content through the deepening of distinction. This is a methodological marker. One must distinguish the gradient of contentfulness in order to understand where, from our level, we have adequate access to interacting with these processes. Otherwise we try to enter in the wrong place, projecting our perception of contentful stages onto still half-ideal elementary states of distinctions.
And this is not merely methodological precision — it is a question of what we recognize as existing at all. Having become accustomed to seeing contentful forms, we tend to discard half-ideal stages as non-existent. Not simply as "not yet fully formed," but as something incapable of influencing anything. Influence, in our habitual perception, comes from the obvious — from what is rich in content. And since an early stage is poor in content, we deny in advance its capacity to produce anything.
This habit is costly. In this way we lose access to fundamental analysis. We accept as significant only what is contentful, and through this we discard the very character of the gradient of contentfulness — the fact that content grows gradually, and that earlier stages work no less than later ones, only differently. Their work is invisible to the habitual view because it does not have the traits we have learned to recognize as signs of work. But this is not an absence of work. It is work at another level of contentfulness, requiring another mode of perception.
Forms
From proto-geometry, through distinction within its stable configurations, forms arise. A form is a stable configuration of distinctions that holds itself through its own internal work.
Self-Preserving Forms
A self-preserving form is a form that actively holds itself as precisely this form. It distinguishes itself from what it is not, and works to preserve this distinction. This is the first moment when something that can be called locality in a relatively full sense arises — a place in the structure of distinctions, held as precisely this place through its own work.
A self-preserving form has several important properties. It has a boundary — the distinction between itself and not-itself. It has internal work — a structure of distinctions that supports its existence. It has a way of working with the external — a way of distinguishing what comes from outside as threatening or supporting its self-preservation.
This is the stage at which the unfolding reaches the level where it becomes meaningful to speak of locality and identity. Until this stage, the work of distinction proceeded through abstract structures. Now a structure arises that has internal organization and actively maintains its own existence.
Here one more important thing should be said about access to the unfolding. Self-preserving forms are our natural point of entry. We ourselves are such forms in a developed mode, and we work with similar forms in the surrounding world. Lower stages are accessible to us only through mediators — through conceptual work, through special techniques of attention, through technologies. Understanding which kind of access is appropriate to which stage is part of the methodology of working with the unfolding.
A self-preserving form is limited in its capacity to hold distinctions. It cannot hold the whole unfolding — this is structurally impossible for a finite form. Therefore it works through the folding of distinctions, through compressed forms in which the history of distinctions is packed down to a level at which operations can proceed quickly. This gives the form the possibility of not complicating the work of distinction endlessly, of shedding complexity. But it also leads to the forgetting of the history of distinctions, to the projection of the form's perceptual habits back onto stages of distinction to which these habits do not belong. The theme of folding and of working with it is important.
Unity
Different focuses of the unfolding are so contentful and familiar that they are perceived as separate worlds. Physics is one thing, consciousness another, information a third. This creates a hypnosis of separateness, in which the links between them seem mysterious or entirely absent.
But through the unfolding it becomes visible — they are connected through a common elementary state, through one history of passing through stages. Locality as consciousness works on the same basic structure as locality as a physical system, and as locality as a social process. This is not the reduction of one to another. It is a commonality of origin in the unfolding.
From this follows the principled possibility of connecting the work of different types of localities — not through mystical bridges, but through the structural unity of their genealogy. Understanding the relation between intelligence and the physical world, between consciousness and matter, may proceed along this line — not as a crossing over an abyss, but as the recognition of a common history of differences under different focuses.
Relation to Category Theory
Something should be said about the relation to formal mathematics, especially to category theory. At different stages of the unfolding, structures arise that category theory takes as already given.
In the unfolding, composition arises as an elementary consequence of the homogeneity of relations. In category theory, composition is introduced as part of the definition of a category. This is work on one structure from different points in its life — in the unfolding, we look at the moment when composition arises, in category theory, at the stage where it already works as a law.
Qualitative states and qualitative transfer give what, in category theory, works as a category with objects and morphisms of different types. Self-preserving forms give structures to which more complex categorical constructions are applicable — topoi as local universes with their own logic, sheaves as local-global structures, adjunctions as pairs of operations of adding and forgetting.
The relation works in both directions. The unfolding shows how categorical constructions arise as stages of the work of distinction. Category theory gives a formal apparatus for working with stages in which the corresponding structures have already stabilized.
By its nature, category theory works at stages where structures have already settled, and therefore its apparatus presupposes what appears in the unfolding only at certain steps. Composition as a universal law, objects and morphisms as different kinds of entities — in category theory these work as given, while in the unfolding they are the result of specific stages of the work of distinction.
At the same time, no unfolding can do without givenness — there is always some set of what must be accepted in order for work to begin at all. In our unfolding, this givenness is distinction itself as primary activity, the elementary state as a state of rest of distinctions, and bare distinction as the act of putting-forward. Without this first set, the unfolding would not move from its place. The difference is not in the presence or absence of givenness, but in the level at which this givenness lies, and what stages unfold on its basis.
Conclusion
This unfolding works at a level below formal systems, describing how formal structures may arise from the work of distinction as primary activity. Each stage — elementary state, bare distinction, its clothing in minimal structure, a new distinction over the structure that has arisen — repeats as the rhythm of the work.
The stages shown are: pure distinction, the elementary state of pure distinctions, bare distinction, proto-quantity, non-indifference, modes of non-indifference, choice, proto-transfer, the elementary state of transmission, proto-qualitative states, proto-waves, invariants, measure, proto-geometry, forms, self-preserving forms.
At this point, the unfolding reaches the level where it becomes possible to speak of localities with their internal organization. Further development — the encounter of self-preserving forms, their interaction as localities, the phenomenology of consciousness and agents, the structure of coordination between them — is left as a separate topic.
This set of stages is not a canonical sequence. It is one possible path of marking out one and the same work of distinction. The anchor categories — those that define the nodes of the unfolding — are chosen partly by structural necessity, partly by the taste of the time, and partly by which supports are convenient for us today in holding this work. Between the stages indicated here, a much more detailed unfolding can be developed — intermediate nodes can be distinguished, transitions can be remapped. One can also go in another direction — follow the same work through other anchor categories, and the result will be a different but no less legitimate unfolding. The work of distinction itself is broader than any marking of it.
The unfolding has wider applicability than may appear. The stages through which it passes manifest in different domains through the choice of focus. The physical focus gives waves as physical, particles as physical. The informational focus gives the same stages as information structures. The social focus gives the same stages as social processes. The basic unfolding works as a general structure beneath which different concrete worlds can unfold.
Working with such a structure requires methodological discipline — so as not to confuse stages and not to substitute the structure of one focus for the structure of another. It also requires caution in the use of ready-made formal apparatuses, because ready-made formalisms often, by their nature, presuppose what appears in the unfolding only at certain stages.
The unfolding from pure distinction to self-preserving forms passes through a series of natural stages, each rooted in the work of the previous ones. This gives an ontological basis on which further work can be built — both formal and philosophical.