This is one possible line of unfolding — from simple distinction to spatial organization. It explores a possible order of distinctions rather than proving the structure of the universe. The names field, wave, topology, metric, and geometry designate structural intuitions here.
Each step arises as an additional distinction within an established organization or as a distinction forming a new structure over its elemental regime. The previous movement persists, but the new structure is not reducible to it. This structure itself can then become an elemental regime for further distinction.
Here we begin with an already accomplished distinction. The experience of abstraction at the limit of thought that leads to this beginning is discussed in the introduction to the ontology and bare distinction.
Once accomplished, a distinction changes the situation. The next distinction is made relative to what has arisen. Holding distinguished moments as belonging to one movement can be called primary extension. This is not yet space or time.
The retained determination of such movement is extremely simple: it is a binary distinction of one from the other. Its sides can conventionally be designated as “1” and “0,” or “being” and “nothing.” We can call this simplest unit of movement within the present inquiry a proto-quantum. This is not yet a particle or an indivisible element: its unity is relative to the established organization. The common order of repetitions of such movements can be called a proto-field.
When repetitions cease to differ significantly from one another, the common order becomes the elemental regime of the field. Movement continues, but reproduces one organization.
What is distinguished over this elemental regime is no longer an individual change, but its relation to another. When one distinction changes the conditions of another, we can speak of non-indifference. The asymmetry of the relation gives direction: “from” differs from “to,” still without spatial points.
The next distinction in this line can be called transfer: the result of one relation changes the conditions of the next. This is the continuation of the action of distinction through relations, not the displacement of a ready-made thing.
The repetition of transfers is organized into propagation. A persisting pattern of such continuation can be called a proto-wave — a structure over the elemental regime of transfers.
Interactions of proto-waves differ in whether they support the pattern’s continuation or disrupt it. This gives content to amplification and attenuation. A stable correspondence between modes of continuation can be called primary resonance. Repetitions of such relations form wave regularities.
Wave regularities become the elemental regime of a new distinction. What is now distinguished is the order of their connections and continuations: what is connected directly, what requires intermediate transformations, and where continuation breaks off or returns to the initial pattern. A topological intuition of neighborhood, region, boundary, and closure can be traced in these distinctions.
Over the elemental regime of connectedness, modes of continuation that cannot be reduced to one another can also be distinguished. Dimensionality thus begins to take shape — not yet mathematical dimension, but a structural intuition of independent directions.
A reproducible pattern of movement can be held as a reference measure for comparing other patterns. A unit and a scale begin to take shape relative to it. A metric intuition can be traced here, not yet a strict metric.
Relative to the reference measure and the character of the field, some patterns of movement stand out, while others remain an elemental regime. A persisting contour can be distinguished as a form, and the stable course of its changes as a path. Form and path are structures over the elemental regime of the field’s movement, not things introduced into it from outside.
The relations of these forms and paths may, as a special case, have a certain familiar geometric character. When connectedness, dimensionality, and comparison are reflected in the perception of a proto-conscious locality, we can call this situation an impression of space.