I Cosmology Without Origin: 7 Preparing the Ground for Semiotics

With the illusions of firstness, temporal sequence, and “before” fully dissolved, the conceptual landscape is cleared. Cosmology without origin shows that the universe does not begin; it does not unfold on a pre-existing temporal stage. It is a field of relational potentials, intelligible only through the cuts we apply to distinguish and articulate instances.

From Potentials to Intelligibility

The series has established:

• The first event is a retrospective cut, not a temporal occurrence.

• Cosmic potentials exist without substrate, independent of matter, space, or time.

• Sequences, causation, and temporal order emerge from perspectival distinction, not intrinsic properties of the universe.

• The Big Bang is an anchor of construal, not a literal origin.

These insights prepare the ground for a radical pivot: if the universe is not “made of” matter or energy first, what makes it intelligible at all? What is the condition of possibility for the cosmos to appear as something structured, lawful, and meaningful?

Towards Semiotics Before Space

The answer lies in meaning itself. In relational ontology, the universe is intelligible because it is actualised through semiosis—not in the human sense, but as the fundamental mechanism by which potentials differentiate into instances.

Series II, Semiotics Before Space, will explore this shift:

• Phenomenon as construed experience → spacetime as a phenomenon.

• Meaning as ontologically constitutive, prior to apparent physical reality.

• How “laws of physics” emerge as patterns of intelligibility within a broader semiosis.

• The “early universe” as shifting constraints in a meaning-system, not a physical spectacle.

Cosmology without origin has cleared the inherited metaphysics. Semiotics before space will show that relation and meaning are the true foundation of intelligibility, and that what we call the universe emerges through these relational actualisations.

The journey from dissolving beginnings to placing meaning at the heart of cosmos is now ready to unfold.