This work develops a unified ontology of temporal systems grounded in the primitive of distinguishability. It shows how stability, entropy, development, life, consciousness, identity, narrative, selfhood, agency, constraint, freedom, meaning, and value emerge as successive expressions of a single mechanism: the generation and preservation of distinguishability under temporal rendering. The result is a non‑circular, generative framework that applies across physical, biological, cognitive, and social domains.
Denis Bailey (Tue,) studied this question.