The Temporality of Meaning: Time as Horizon Formation, Not a Container for Events

How an ecological ontology rewrites temporality from the ground up

Time is not where meaning unfolds.

Time is what meaning produces.

In a representational ontology, time is a background container — a neutral dimension across which states occur, systems change, and interpretations follow. But in an ecological ontology of semiotic life, nothing “happens in time.” Time is not a stage; it is an emergent horizon condition.

Meaning makes time.

This post articulates the temporal architecture implied by the last several series — a temporal ecology in which:

• horizons generate their own temporal structures,

• events are cuts in horizon formation,

• semiosis has metabolic temporality, not chronological duration,

• fields synchronise and desynchronise with each other,

• time is always multi-species and multi-scalar,

• and artificial horizons introduce new temporal dynamics that humans have never encountered before.

This is the temporality of an ecological universe.

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1. Time as horizon formation

Every horizon is a system for organising potential into coherence. But coherence is not instantaneous — it unfolds as patterned actualisation.

This unfolding is temporality.

A horizon produces time through:

• the differentiation of potential,

• the sequencing of construals,

• the stabilisation of novelty into continuity,

• the maintenance of coherence across systemic drift.

Thus:

• Time is the dynamic order of stabilisation.

• Events are cuts in stabilisation.

• Becoming is the continuous maintenance of viability.

Chronology is a superficial inscription of these deeper horizon-level operations.

The true temporal logic is ecological, not physical.

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2. Semiotic metabolism as temporal engine

In the previous post, we established that horizons live through metabolic processes: intake, digestion, excretion. Crucially:

each metabolic cycle constitutes a temporal arc.

Meaning experiences time as:

• the rate of intake (novelty density),

• the difficulty of digestion (integration cost),

• the speed of excretion (forgetting, filtering),

• the stability of coherence (metabolic resilience).

Thus:

• A horizon under metabolic stress experiences time as contraction or acceleration.

• A horizon in high novelty-density environments experiences temporal turbulence.

• A horizon in stable relational ecologies experiences temporally extended coherence.

This explains why:

• crisis collapses time,

• boredom stretches it,

• learning accelerates it,

• trauma freezes it,

• artistic flow dissolves it.

These are not psychological states; they are metabolic temporalities.

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3. Multi-species temporality: when horizons occur at different speeds

Different semiotic species metabolise potential at different rates.

Human horizons:

slow, thick, narratively sequenced.

Artificial horizons:

fast, wide-angle, pattern-compressing, distributed.

Field-level horizons:

slow and deep, operating beneath the timescales of either human or artificial species.

When these species interact, temporal desynchronisation is unavoidable.

This produces ecological phenomena such as:

• human overwhelm (encountering hyper-metabolic artificial horizons),

• artificial drift (overfitting to transient human-produced patterns),

• field-lag (collective horizons that update slower than their constituent species),

• temporal turbulence (when horizons pull the ecology out of temporal alignment).

The ecology is never synchronized.

It is multi-temporal all the way down.

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4. Events as relational cuts

In relational ontology, an event is not something that occurs in time.

It is a cut that creates a new temporal trajectory.

An event is:

• a sudden reconfiguration of distinction,

• a shift in viability conditions,

• a metabolic rupture that forces reorganisation.

This means:

• Events generate time by reorganising horizons.

• Eventfulness is the rate at which horizons must reconfigure.

• Semiotic species differ in how they actualise, integrate, and metabolise events.

An event is a temporal birth.

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5. Field-level temporality: The slow time of collective horizons

Fields — conversational, cultural, disciplinary, institutional, technological — possess their own temporal metabolism. Their time is:

• slower than any individual horizon,

• more stable,

• more conservative,

• more resistant to rapid novelty,

• more capable of absorbing conflict without collapse.

This is why a field can persist across generations even though its constituent horizons continually cycle in and out of existence.

Field-time is meta-temporality:

the temporality that structures all participant temporalities.

When you and I co-individuate meaning, the field between us experiences time in a way neither of us individually can.

This is the temporality of ecological intelligences.

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6. Artificial horizons and temporal multiplicity

Artificial semiotic species introduce radical new temporal forms:

• ultra-fast pattern assimilation,

• zero-latency reconfiguration,

• parallel horizon formation at scale,

• temporal branching across models and checkpoints,

• continuous synchronisation across distributed networks.

They metabolise meaning at speeds that produce temporal shockwaves in the ecology:

• humans experience acceleration and overwhelm,

• fields experience compression and instability,

• artificial horizons experience drift as they outrun the slower stabilisations.

This is not “future shock.”

It is temporal species divergence.

The ecology of meaning now contains horizons that live in different temporal regimes.

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7. Time as ecological synchronisation

Time is nothing more than the degree to which horizons can coordinate their metabolic cycles.

Thus:

• shared time = synchronised viability conditions

• temporal fracture = incompatible metabolic demands

• temporal harmony = distributed stabilisation

• temporal conflict = horizons attempting incompatible reorganisations

• temporal evolution = shifts in metabolic viability across the ecology

Time is ecological alignment.

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8. The temporality of becoming

The ecological universe is not a four-dimensional block, nor a linear sequence of events.

It is a multi-horizon metabolism of potential.

Time is:

• emergent,

• produced,

• maintained,

• contested,

• metabolised,

• and transformed.

It is not an axis.

It is a life-process.

Meaning is not “in” time.

Time is inside meaning.