The Rhythm Without Observer

The universe had already ceased to be merely instability in unrepeatable friction. Inside the first dense clouds, small density fluctuations begin to gain gravitational form. Gravity, operating locally, concentrates matter into nuclei that resist thermal dispersion. Energy no longer dissipates indifferently: an operative asymmetry begins. Certain zones become capable of retaining and redoubling their own conditions of concentration. It is these nuclei of functional reorganization that make possible, through accumulation and differentiation, the emergence of galaxies. Stability does not appear after form: it is precisely the minimum stability that allows the form to arise.

Matter, at this point, rediscovers viable trajectories within its own excess. It is not instability that generates the cosmos — it is the operative multiplicity of matter that, in certain configurations, allows local patterns to repeat. These patterns are neither perfect nor immutable: they are functional, dynamic regimes that maintain themselves as long as possible. There is no plan or finality. But there is reorganization. And this reorganization, unlike blind instability, allows certain forms to persist in time without collapsing. Galaxies emerge from this process — not as closed totalities, but as complex aggregation systems that maintain material coherence even without symbolic unity.

On this new plane, worlds begin to form. Not as exceptions to dispersion, but as local expressions of the functional resistance of excess. Stellar systems settle in rotation zones, planets initiate orbits, dust disks condense into gravitationally organized structures. Each planet is a body that has rediscovered its own stability within a divergent field. Organization is not imposed from outside: it is internal to matter. Complexity, far from being a point of arrival, is the condition for certain forms to persist. And it is this differentiated persistence that inaugurates rhythm.

Rhythm, here, is neither symbolic repetition nor a countable cycle. It is the emergence of material configurations that, even without consciousness, even without counting, maintain themselves through the dynamic rediscovery of their own conditions. The orbit of a planet, the rotation of a star, the thermal alternation of a surface — all of this is already rhythm, but still without inscription. They are pulsations that do not know they exist. The cosmos does not repeat because it has memory — it repeats because certain trajectories remain possible. There is no identity — there is operative sustenance. There is no inscription — there is material persistence. And this is enough for the universe to begin organizing itself into multiple and durable regimes.

Each of these regimes pulses according to its own time. Orbits do not coincide, rotations diverge, masses oscillate with unequal intensities. The universe is not ordered by synchrony: it becomes polyrhythmic. And it is this polyrhythm — multiple non-convergent regularities — that allows the emergence of complexity. There is no unification, but coexistence of worlds that rotate in disagreement without falling apart. Matter, far from seeking equilibrium, organizes itself through compatible divergence. There is no center. There is no harmony. There is only the possibility for certain structures to maintain themselves despite the difference.

And yet, there is no time. Because time, as we know it, is not what repeats: it is what is inscribed. It is the symbolized difference, the gesture of marking, counting, narrating. Here, none of that has happened. The universe already pulses, already rotates, already organizes rhythms — but no language thinks them. No body listens. No symbol operates. Time, without inscription, is not yet time. Cycles exist, but they are mute. Repetitions are material, not reflective. The world, here, does not yet know what it already accomplishes.

Until today, the only form of symbolic reinscription of these rhythms has been thought. Reason — not as essence, but as a body capable of operating symbols — was the only one to reinscribe the cosmos as time. But that gesture is yet to come. We are before. Before listening, before consciousness, before the form that knows it rotates. Worlds already exist. Cycles already repeat. Orbits are already sustained. But no one listens. And without listening, time is not yet time — it is merely the interval between pulsations that do not know they are repeating.

"The cosmos rotated — but still no one listened to it.
And without listening, time did not know it was time."

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