Nothing Is Stable In The Beginning

There is no inaugural rest. Initial stability is not given, but arises momentarily, potentially lasting a millisecond or millions of years, without implying any definitive stability. Matter, in its most primordial degree, is not a formed structure, but a field of unstable possibilities, in constant oscillation. There is not yet full form, only agitations and fluctuations that prevent any absolute rest.

The philosophical tradition, from Parmenides and Aristotle to more modern readings like those of Bergson or Whitehead, sought to understand the beginning as stable order, whether as immutable being, perfect act, creative duration, or organizing process. Even dialectical or processual interpretations, although more dynamic, preserved a tendency to view instability as a transition to an ordered and lasting state. In Heraclitus, for example, the flow obeys a regulating logos; in Hegel, contradiction is subsumed into a final synthesis.

The Ontology of Emergent Complexity refuses this reading. In the beginning, there is no rest, no equilibrium, no unity. There is unstable matter, whose interactions do not produce lasting stability, only momentary configurations. It is not a matter of failure or rupture, but of an excess of possibilities not yet consolidated.

Contemporary investigations in quantum physics and cosmology reinforce this view: fields of quantum fluctuations, vacuum instability, chaotic behaviors in non-linear systems show that, at the most fundamental scale, stability is always local, relative, and transitory. Even elementary particles emerge and decay on temporal scales that challenge any human notion of permanence.

Some of these instabilities prolong themselves, creating metastable zones that, under certain physical conditions, can sustain internal reorganizations. It is at this threshold that agglomerations form that resist dispersion a little longer, energy fields that retain matter for longer, patterns that repeat before dissolving. The moment of this stability is always relative to the scale of observation: brief or long for us, but always provisional in the dynamics of the real.

All initial stability is partial and fragile. Matter, before becoming stable at any scale, traverses multiple configuration attempts, and each of these attempts carries the mark of the instability that generated it. There is neither meaning nor finality in this process, only the persistence of momentary compositions.

The stability we know — stars, planets, molecules — results from contingent prolongations of unstable states. The beginning, understood as stability, is always a local and transitory effect of processes that started chaotic and remained unstable.

There is no immovable beginning. There is only matter that, starting from absolute instability, invents temporary ways to endure.

"Nothing begins as foundation.
Everything begins as instability that has not dissolved."

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