If stabilisation without instruction can occur in neural systems, a different but structurally resonant phenomenon appears in cosmology: the large-scale filamentary structure of the universe.
Observations from surveys such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey reveal that galaxies are not randomly distributed. They cluster along vast interconnected filaments, forming what is often called the “cosmic web.” Early anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background, measured with high precision by missions such as Planck, indicate that these large-scale structures emerged from minute fluctuations in the early universe.
The standard account invokes gravitational instability. Slight overdensities in the primordial plasma attract additional matter. Attraction increases density. Increased density strengthens gravitational pull. Over time, matter accumulates along extended filaments and nodes.
Amplification from Fluctuation
The initial conditions of the early universe were not uniform. Quantum-scale fluctuations — however interpreted physically — were magnified during cosmic expansion. Regions marginally denser than their surroundings exerted marginally stronger gravitational attraction.
The process is recursive:
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Slight difference
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Differential attraction
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Reinforced accumulation
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Structural persistence
Small relational asymmetries become dynamically consequential.
What survives is not what was designed, but what was amplified.
Filaments form because certain relational configurations — distributions of mass-energy — become self-reinforcing under gravitational dynamics. Over cosmic timescales, these configurations stabilise into persistent structure.
Again: stabilisation without instruction.
Thickening as Gravitational Stabilisation
In a relational description, the early universe may be understood as a field of structured potential — not empty uniformity, but dynamically differentiated possibility.
Filament formation can be described, cautiously, as thickening within that field.
Regions of slightly higher density are not instructed to become nodes. They are inclined toward further accumulation. Gravitational interaction differentially actualises certain trajectories of mass distribution rather than others.
The field becomes structured through its own dynamics.
As with neuronal selection, we are not dealing with representation. There is no symbolic layer. No meaning is present here. Only non-semiotic physical interaction and stabilisation.
This is crucial.
The resonance with neural selection lies not in shared substance, but in shared structural pattern:
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Endogenous variation
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Differential reinforcement
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Emergent persistence
The universe does not require a blueprint to develop large-scale order. Order can arise from differential amplification within a relational field.
Where the Resonance Stops
The analogy must remain disciplined.
Cosmological filament formation is governed by gravitational dynamics. It operates at scales and under conditions radically distinct from biological systems.
What exists is differential stabilisation under physical law.
A relational ontology does not reduce cosmology to neuroscience, nor neuroscience to cosmology. It identifies a shared structural motif: stabilisation emerging from variation without external imposition.
Just as neuronal groups become stabilised patterns of activity, cosmic filaments become stabilised patterns of matter.
In both cases, persistence is not instruction. It is the amplification of relational difference.
But before meaning can arise, there must already be a world whose structure is not arbitrary — a world in which certain trajectories endure.
Filaments mark one such endurance.
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