Distance Before Dimension

There is no stage before the gesture. At the ontological threshold immediately after the origin of the universe, there is not yet a formed space where things can move away: there is only matter in a state of instability, frictions without cartography, tensions that do not yet have a name. "Distance," here, cannot mean what it will mean later; it is not a measure between points, because there are no points yet. It is the first displacement that resists in the midst of turbulence — a minimal physical persistence, capable of maintaining itself long enough to alter the flow around it. Distance is sustained displacement before it is a number.

The ontological hypothesis is rigorous: if we do not postulate a transcendent substrate, all spatiality must arise from internal operations of complex matter. Distance is precisely one of these operations. It does not presuppose coordinates; it produces the possibility of coordinates by stabilizing, even if locally and precariously, an interval of relation. Where there was only continuous variation, a displacement emerges that resists enough to be resumed. Distance is the embryonic form of differentiated repetition: it returns without coinciding, opens a trace without fixing a path.

There is no neutral void: there are fields in tension whose own dynamics generate zones of rarefaction and condensation. When a difference in intensity does not dissipate at the same cadence in which it is produced, a local asymmetry is established that can be reactivated — and in this reactivation, we recognize the outline of a separation. Distance does not separate given configurations; it co-engenders configurations by separating. Separation is constitutive, not posterior: by opening an interval, it gives body to what it separates.

This implies a decisive consequence for how we situate initial temporality. In the beginning, speaking of “before” and “after” in current terms is clandestinely introducing an already organized chronology. Inaugural time does not measure durations; it designates the cadence with which differences sustain themselves as differences. When a perturbation lasts long enough to be encountered again, it does not just inaugurate a spatial interval; it institutes a minimal regularity of reiteration — a rhythm without an observer. This is why, at the origin, distance and time are not independent variables: the consistency of distance is how time begins to have thickness, and the thickness of time is how distance avoids collapsing.

Gravity — later thought of as a bond — cannot, here, be evoked as a law upon a ready stage. It arises as the stabilization of relational patterns that make certain distances more likely to be maintained than others. Before “attraction” and “curvature,” there is only the differential efficacy of local bindings: zones where matter insists on re-encountering itself, folding the flow until the interval becomes an operative habit. Distance and bond are the same operation viewed from two sides: separation that allows cohesion, cohesion that only exists because there was separation.

This framework rejects both subtle teleology — the idea that matter tended to make itself space — and the inverse myth of an indecipherable chaos. Instability is not confusion; it is a condition of form. What differs does not do so arbitrarily, but according to regimes of possibility that the dynamics themselves install. Distance, thus understood, is not born of a calculation; it is born of an insistence. That which persists long enough to be resumed does not reveal a plan — it shows that there was operative excess to sustain a difference as a difference. There is universe in act when some differences no longer dissolve at the speed of their creation.

If we take “measure” as a comparison between instances, the inaugural distance only becomes potentially measurable when it repeats with sufficient stability to be resumed. There is no ruler outside the gesture that repeats: the metric is born when repetition becomes credible, when the material system itself preserves an interval with enough regularity to rely on it.

This material genealogy of distance implies a descriptive caution: we should not describe it as a map, but accompany it as it forms. Speaking of the first distance in the language of a stabilized object betrays the inaugural scene. The most faithful description is one that preserves the risk: distance as a gesture that tears a margin from indifference, that creates an edge where there was only variation. The name “distance” here designates less a result than an act — an act without an author, because there is no subject; an act without purpose, because there is no end; an act with effect, because there is a persistent physical trace.

The initial “separation” is not negative. It does not deprive, it enables. By opening an interval, it allows something to configure itself as something. Differentiation is always prior to any identification. No distance is self-sufficient: it is maintained only while integrated into a network of differences that reactivate it. The first “far” already contains an “between.” The spatial regime does not begin with things in places, but with between-places that cause things to emerge.

Distance does not appear in space; it manufactures space by force of repetition. It is not space that guarantees distance; it is distance that makes space conceivable. “Distance does not measure: it inaugurates a possible scenario.” “There are not two points — there is the interval that produces them.” Space is the regularity that difference acquires upon re-encountering itself.

There is no distance in a preformed void; there is distance only when a difference persists. In the first moments when space begins to emerge, matter knows neither map nor boundaries: pulsations, compressions, and rarefactions succeed one another at all scales, but most dissolve as quickly as they appear. Only when one of these variations resists immediate collapse can we speak of an interval — not in the sense of two already given points, but as physical persistence that separates and, by separating, creates. Distance does not rely on coordinates; it creates the scenario where coordinates will one day make sense.

This emergence is not uniform. There is no general law that guarantees the permanence of a separation; there are local compatibilities, momentary arrangements of forces that stabilize enough for an interval to repeat. This repetition, even if imperfect, inaugurates what will later be recognized as metric. Before that, distance is merely physical persistence: the momentary stabilization of a displacement that, for some material reason, holds up in the turmoil.

By creating an interval, distance co-engenders that which it separates. There are no pre-constituted forms that then move apart; the separation is precisely what gives them contour. Each inaugural interval is simultaneously an operation of differentiation and composition: it separates and gives body, separates and founds. The “between” is not a passive void — it is an active operator in the configuration of what will come to be perceived as an object or region.

If we accept, even speculatively, hypotheses such as that of time with more than one dimension, this inaugural distance can be thought of not as a line, but as a fold in a denser temporal-spatial weave. What we represent today as linear separation may be just the simplified projection — an effect of our modeling — of a much more complex relationship, which at its origin simultaneously articulated temporal variation and material disposition. This reinforces the idea that distance and time are not separated in their emergence; they are two names for the same primordial gesture.

This reading prevents us from thinking of space as a stage where events “happens” and rejects the idea that distance is merely a subsequent symbolic construction. Distance is a material operation that precedes any symbolic process, but which already produces an organizing effect — the contingent outline of what, much later, will be symbolized as space.

In the inaugural scene, there is neither clock nor ruler, but there is rhythm and interval — faces of the same physical persistence. What we designate today as “time” and “distance” emerges in the same ontological gesture: the repetition of a difference that is maintained. When a variation persists long enough to occur again, it does not just create a spatial interval; it also creates a minimal cadence that sustains the possibility of its return. The first distance already contains the first time, and the first time is only time because the distance is materially conserved.

This co-emergence dismantles the notion that space is a structure where time runs, or that time is a flow that traverses a pre-existing stage. Before any of these images, there is the material operation that sustains differences — and it is from this sustenance that “before/after” and “near/far” simultaneously detach. Space and time, at this threshold, are not separate dimensions, but complementary effects of the same stabilization process.

If both are born from the same material gesture, any attempt to think of an isolated “first moment” in time or an isolated “first point” in space is conceptually misleading. There is no pure instant nor pure place; there are only relational configurations that, by repeating themselves, sediment the possibility of speaking of instants and places. The origin of this regime is not a landmark, but a functional coupling.

Contemporary theories that suggest a more complex geometry for time — including multiple temporal dimensions — find a speculative resonance here: what we call “measure” may be only a partial effect of our modeling of a much more intricate space-time mesh.

From this inseparability follows a methodological caution: any symbolic reconstruction — always subsequent and situated — must avoid artificially separating what was never separate. When we isolate time as a line or space as a container, we betray their joint birth. The most faithful analysis is the one that maintains the tension between cadence and interval, without reducing one to the other.

Thus, time and distance are not quantities that intersect on a graph: they are the matrix upon which every future graph can be traced. Thinking of this emergence as inseparability is refusing the comfort of an initial point and recognizing that what we call the beginning is already relation. And every relation is, from the first instant, a way of simultaneously inhabiting space and time.

Distance only persists if there is something that sustains it. In the initial phase of the space-time regime, this sustenance is not a uniform and universal field, but the effect of local attractions that begin to bind what was previously only moving away or dispersing. Gravity, as we know it, is the subsequent stabilization and generalization of a more primitive condition: the tendency of masses and energies to curve each other's paths, creating zones of relative retention in the flow.

At this stage, the gravitational bond is not yet a formulated global law; it manifests contingently, depending on the concentrations of matter and energy. Each point of attraction is also a point of stabilization: the distance that was previously maintained only by inertia begins to be modulated by a relationship of retention. It is this retention that, over time, will give rise to orbits, aggregates, and more durable structures.

Thinking of gravity as an emergent bond is rejecting the idea that it always existed as a finished principle. The force we describe mathematically today is the result of a process of relational consolidation. Before being a “law,” it was local compatibility between masses, adjusting to each new unstable equilibrium. This reading avoids both the myth of eternal gravity and its reduction to a mere geometric consequence of a pre-given space.

The most relevant point is realizing that this bond does not nullify the initial instability; on the contrary, it operates within it. Gravity does not close the system or definitively fix distances, but creates regions where movement organizes itself more predictably. These are zones of relative calm in the middle of a field still dominated by variation. Thus, gravity is less a factor of absolute order and more a material operator that prolongs certain relations, allowing differences in interval and cadence to be maintained for longer periods.

In this sense, gravity is already a form of primary material stabilization that regulates intervals and rhythms before any observer. By connecting, it inscribes a provisional rule in matter: here, the relationship does not immediately dissolve. It is this “here” that, multiplied across countless points of attraction, begins to weave the fabric where space and time can acquire more recognizable contours.

The persistence of distances, modulated by incipient gravitational bonds, begins to produce something unprecedented: recognizable spatial patterns. This is not yet “space” as a continuous entity, but local constellations of relations stable enough that variation is no longer pure dispersion. These configurations are not products of a plan, but accumulated effects of multiple retentions and separations that temporarily balance themselves.

What we today call structures — clusters, filaments, voids — is born, at this stage, as a contingent result of matter responding to local forces. There is no pre-designed universal skeleton; each configuration emerges as a specific solution to the set of tensions that traverse it. Therefore, diversity is extreme: dense regions coexist with rarefied zones, and the scale of formations varies from small aggregations to vast complexes, without a single rule governing their disposition.

These first spatial configurations contingently precede what will later be interpreted as body or territory. But, at this moment, their distinct form is inseparable from the movement that maintains it. There is no “object” detached from the network of forces that sustains it; there is form as an active process, maintained by a delicate balance that can unravel at any moment.

This provisional character implies that such patterns are not solid blocks, but living weaves of relations. Any alteration in the intensity of forces — mass redistribution, variation in energy flow — can completely reorganize what seemed stable. The first “islands” of spatial organization function as cosmic laboratories of experimentation, where matter incessantly tests and abandons combinations.

At the same time, these formations inaugurate an unprecedented level of functionality in the real: beyond isolated bonds or persistent distances, an emergent topography arises — not a finished map, but a relief of forces and presences. This functionality is not yet symbolic; it is material-operative. Matter itself responds to these configurations, adjusting to them in its dynamics.

From here, the field ceases to be merely a dispersed set of events and begins to behave as a fabric of relations with its own hierarchies and tensions. It is this mesh, still irregular and unstable, that will provide the ground for the gradual transition from a purely relational regime to a more cohesive spatial regime — a transition that will be explored in depth in the following texts.

Speaking of inaugural space implies recognizing an inevitable limit: any description is already a reconstruction made from subsequent conditions. There was no observer in that scenario, nor language to capture it. All we know is deduced from material traces and theoretical models formulated in the present, projecting hypotheses onto a field that cannot be directly re-encountered.

This limit is not only epistemological; it is also ontological. Space, as we conceive it — continuous, measurable, three-dimensional — did not yet exist as a stabilized form. What existed were local relations, distances maintained by compatibilities of forces and incipient gravitational bonds, forming ephemeral patterns. Our geometry is retro-projected onto a field that, at its origin, did not obey these rules.

Therefore, when speaking of this inaugural instant, it is necessary to avoid the illusion of completeness. The most we can do is reconstruct what remains consistent between different physical models and cosmological hypotheses, articulating it with a philosophical reflection that resists the temptation to see in this beginning an already ready stage. Any conception of a universal “container,” empty waiting to be filled, betrays the very process by which space and time emerge together from relational configurations.

This caution does not mean abandoning speculation, but recognizing its situated character: it is not about describing “what was,” but about thinking about the conditions through which something could come to be. It is the difference between narrating the history of a scenario and investigating the material gesture that made it possible.

The inaugural space remains, largely, beyond the reach of direct description. What remains for us is to follow the material clues derived from it, aware that they are late effects. Their value lies precisely in what they suggest: that before any order, there was relation; before any stage, connection; before any geometry, interval.

It is this thread that leads the reflection to the threshold of the next text, where the question will cease to be merely how distance stabilizes, to become how it consolidates within the web of bonds we know today.

"Space does not precede distance,
it is born from the gesture that increases it."

—— David Cota — Founder of the Ontology of Emergent Complexity ——