Coherence: a computational reasoning system for AI and physical modeling

Before the first “1” was ever spoken, written, or imagined, something else had to happen. Something subtle. Something profound. A distinction had to be made. Not a count. Not a quantity. Not an Object. Just a moment, a difference that can be noticed and measured.

We take it for granted that the number one represents “a single thing”. But long before we could identify something as “one”, we had to perceive something as separate from something else. In that act of distinction, not the count, but in the contrast, lies a potential truth of mathematics that we will explore.

Our current mathematical universe begins with the idea that discrete things exist, that you have one apple, then add another and end up with two apples. We further presume that this basic logic scales both down to the subatomic scale and all the way up to galactic scales and further.

But what if this model, while utilitarian in terms of understanding the real world in a simplistic form, isn’t how the real world behaves. What if this model is just a useful illusion, a projection, a narrative imposed upon a much more fluid and relational world?

The Universe Doesn’t Count

Look closely at the world around you. You see trees. You see people. You know about larger things like planets and solar systems. We can see these things and measure them with our own eyes and human scale measurement devices. In the larger scales, we view them with our telescopes and apparently observe their discreteness. Further more in a more technical sense, we can ask questions like: Does a beam of light “contain” one photon or many? That being said, does a forest care whether it holds one bird or a hundred?

One thesis is that, the universe doesn’t count. Nature doesn’t count. We do. We have a need to reduce, to symbolize, to hold something stable in our minds. But this drive to discretize, though useful, can blind us from the idea that the universe and everything we perceive is not discrete. Our bias toward discreteness turns what might better be modeled universally as fluid dynamics into rigid equations. This bias makes us think “particles” are real and “waves” are metaphorical, rather than potentially the other way around. It convinces us that quantity preceeds quality, when in fact, the opposite may be a more useful or universal model.

The Premise of Coherence

This article is a first in a series based upon the proposition:

The universe is not made of things. It is made of fields of relation. In effect, “One” is not a building block, it is a moment of coherence, arising when an observer’s attention crosses a threshold of distinction.

• We call this threshold “Delta”, a moment of recognizable difference.
• We call the field from which it emerges “Phi”, a continuous, undivided substrate.
• We call the observer’s perspective “Xi”, a frame from which meaning arises.

From these, we will build not a replacement for traditional mathematics, but an alternative method, a new foundation for constructing a new foundation space. One that does not begin with numbers. One that begins with the emergence of meaning itself.

What Comes Next

In the articles that follow, we’ll build this grammar of Coherence step by step addressing the fundamentals of this new solution space addressing:

• How “nothing” is not empty, just undistinguished.
• How addition can lead to silence, not summation.
• How infinity is a breakdown of framing, not a number.
• How the very act of observing bring structure into being.

Bear with me, as we build these ideas from the very foundation into something useful in terms of providing a language which itself might provide utility beyond that provided through more traditional methods.

https://medium.com/@paul.bernard.gm/mathematics-series-the-moment-a-difference-appears-defining-distinction-part-2-7760a2b18d9a