MID/QC Foundation Series 9 - Entropy Reframed: Coherence, Configuration, and the True Arrow of the Universe

This paper reframes entropy as a substrate‑native coherence measure, not a statistical artifact or macroscopic approximation. Within the MID/QC framework, entropy emerges from the geometry of configuration space, the tension gradients that shape allowable transitions, and the irreversible drift imposed by coherence asymmetry.Rather than treating the arrow of time as an emergent thermodynamic tendency, this work demonstrates that temporal directionality is a geometric inevitability of the substrate itself.The paper establishes: entropy as a coherence‑configuration functional, the substrate’s irreducible asymmetry as the source of temporal ordering, the distinction between memory state, configuration accessibility, and coherence decay, and the universal arrow of time as a tension‑driven descent through configuration space.This reframing unifies thermodynamics, information theory, and cosmological evolution under a single substrate‑level principle.