Mathematics and the Shadow of Time: A Temporal-Relational Framework
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This paper proposes a new metaphysical foundation for mathematics grounded in temporality and relational dynamics. It argues that mathematical structures do not exist independently of time, but instead emerge wherever physical, biological, or cognitive systems achieve sufficient stability for relations to persist and become formalizable. Drawing from physics, information theory, computation, and category theory, the paper shows that mathematics arises as a way of encoding patterns that remain coherent across recursive interactions over time. Rather than viewing mathematics as derived from logic or abstract entities, it is presented here as emerging from the temporal processes that structure reality. Consciousness, understood as a recursive, temporally situated process, plays a key role in anticipating and simulating stable patterns, helping to explain mathematics' predictive power and applicability across domains. This framework challenges Platonism, formalism, and structural realism by situating identity, number, and logic as outcomes of stabilized interaction rather than preconditions for it. Mathematics, in this view, is not timeless—but a formal expression of temporal coherence.
Author: McClure, Joseph
Language: English
Subfield: Theoretical Computer Science
Field: Mathematics
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W6912002688
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