Conceptual impressions surrounding this post have yet to be substantiated, corroborated, confirmed or woven into a larger argument, context or network. Objective: To generate symbolic links between scientific discovery, design awareness and consciousness.
A DAC Scenario of Balanced Change: The Observer in a Field of Becoming
Within the Design-Consciousness (DAC) model, change is not an isolated event but a circulatory process in which energy, meaning, and form co-evolve through the observer’s participation in reality. Metaphysically, this situates the observer not as a passive recorder of a pre-given world, but as a co-constitutive agent within a field of becoming, echoing both phenomenology and process philosophy (Husserl, 1913/1982; Whitehead, 1929/1978). The DAC sequence can therefore be understood as a methodology of balance: a regulated flow of energy across eight interdependent dimensions: ontology, semiosis, dynamics, temporality, creativity, causality, structure, and epistemology, each constraining and enabling the others.
1. Ontology: The Field of What-Is
The sequence begins with ontology, not as a static inventory of beings, but as a field of potentiality and actualization. In DAC terms, ontology designates the pre-reflective “there-is” that conditions any experience. This resonates with Heidegger’s account of Being as the horizon within which entities can appear at all (Heidegger, 1927/1962), and with Whitehead’s view that reality is fundamentally a process of “actual occasions” rather than fixed substances (Whitehead, 1929/1978). For the observer, ontology is the background energy field, the metaphysical substrate of possibilities that can be selected, differentiated, and brought into form.
2. Semiosis: The Emergence of Meaning
From this ontological field, semiosis arises as the process by which differences become significant. Following Peirce, meaning is not a static correspondence but a triadic process involving sign, object, and interpretant, unfolding over time (Peirce, 1931–1958). In the DAC model, semiosis is the first modulation of energy into patterned information: the observer does not merely receive signals but actively participates in the production of meaning. This aligns with biosemiotic and phenomenological accounts that treat cognition as inherently interpretive (Deacon, 1997; Merleau-Ponty, 1945/2012).
3. Dynamics: Energy in Motion
Once meaning begins to differentiate the field, dynamics governs how these distinctions move, interact, and transform. Dynamics, in this metaphysical sense, refers not only to physical motion but to relational change across systems: psychological, symbolic, social, and material. Prigogine’s work on dissipative structures shows how far-from-equilibrium systems can generate new order through flux and instability (Prigogine & Stengers, 1984). In DAC, dynamics is the circulatory engine: it ensures that meaning does not congeal into stasis but remains responsive, adaptive, and open to novelty.
4. Temporality: The Horizon of Change
Temporality provides the horizon within which dynamics can be experienced as sequence, duration, and transformation. Bergson’s notion of durée emphasizes time as lived continuity rather than discrete instants (Bergson, 1910/2001), while Husserl shows how consciousness synthesizes past, present, and future in each act of awareness (Husserl, 1913/1982). In the DAC sequence, temporality regulates the pacing of change, allowing the observer to integrate flux into coherent experience rather than being overwhelmed by it.
5. Creativity: The Introduction of Novelty
Within this temporal-dynamic field, creativity functions as the principle of emergence, the capacity of the system to produce forms not strictly reducible to prior states. This echoes both Whitehead’s concept of creativity as the ultimate metaphysical category (Whitehead, 1929/1978) and contemporary theories of emergence in complex systems (Kauffman, 1995). In DAC terms, creativity is the injection of new vectors into the field: it is where energy in motion becomes genuinely transformative rather than merely repetitive.
6. Causality: Constraint and Continuity
However, creativity does not operate in a vacuum. Causality provides the constraints and continuities that prevent novelty from dissolving into chaos. Modern philosophy of science increasingly treats causality as context-sensitive and system-dependent rather than purely linear (Pearl, 2009). In the DAC sequence, causality is the selective filter: it channels creative emergence into trajectories that remain intelligible and sustainable within the observer’s world.
7. Structure: Stabilization of Form
From causal patterning arises structure, the temporary stabilization of relations into forms, models, institutions, or habits. Structuralism and systems theory both emphasize that structures are not eternal essences but relational configurations that persist only so long as the dynamics that sustain them (Piaget, 1970; von Bertalanffy, 1968). In DAC, structure is crystallized energy: it makes experience workable and communicable, but must remain permeable to further change.
8. Epistemology: Reflexive Integration
Finally, epistemology closes the loop by asking how the observer knows and justifies these structures and processes. Rather than a detached standpoint, contemporary epistemology increasingly recognizes the situated and embodied character of knowing (Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991). In the DAC model, epistemology is the reflexive regulator: it evaluates, revises, and re-orients the entire sequence, feeding back into ontology by reshaping what counts as real, relevant, or possible for the observer.
The Balanced Circuit of Change
Taken together, these eight elements form a recursive circuit rather than a one-way pipeline. Ontology supplies the field; semiosis differentiates it; dynamics mobilizes it; temporality orders it; creativity transforms it; causality constrains it; structure stabilizes it; and epistemology reflects and recalibrates it. The observer is not outside this circuit but embedded within it, participating in the continuous balancing of energy in motion. This accords with second-order cybernetics and enactive cognition, where the observer is part of the system observed (von Foerster, 1974; Varela et al., 1991).
In DAC terms, a “successful” balance of change is not the elimination of tension but the maintenance of coherent circulation among these dimensions, enough structure to sustain meaning, enough creativity to allow evolution, enough causality to preserve continuity, and enough epistemic reflexivity to prevent dogmatism. Change, therefore, is not an interruption of order but its metastable mode of existence: a designed, observed, and continually renegotiated flow of becoming.
References (APA)
- Bergson, H. (2001). Time and free will: An essay on the immediate data of consciousness (F. L. Pogson, Trans.). Dover. (Original work published 1910)
- Deacon, T. W. (1997). The symbolic species: The co-evolution of language and the brain. W. W. Norton.
- Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). Harper & Row. (Original work published 1927)
- Husserl, E. (1982). Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy, First Book (F. Kersten, Trans.). Springer. (Original work published 1913)
- Kauffman, S. A. (1995). At home in the universe: The search for laws of self-organization and complexity. Oxford University Press.
- Merleau-Ponty, M. (2012). Phenomenology of perception (D. A. Landes, Trans.). Routledge. (Original work published 1945)
- Pearl, J. (2009). Causality: Models, reasoning, and inference (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
- Peirce, C. S. (1931–1958). Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss, & A. Burks, Eds.). Harvard University Press.
- Piaget, J. (1970). Structuralism (C. Maschler, Trans.). Basic Books.
- Prigogine, I., & Stengers, I. (1984). Order out of chaos: Man’s new dialogue with nature. Bantam.
- von Bertalanffy, L. (1968). General system theory: Foundations, development, applications. George Braziller.
- von Foerster, H. (1974). Cybernetics of cybernetics. In Communication and Control in Society (pp. 5–8). Gordon and Breach.
- Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. MIT Press.
- Whitehead, A. N. (1978). Process and reality: An essay in cosmology (Corrected ed.). Free Press. (Original work published 1929)
The author generated some of this text in part with ChatGPT 5.2 OpenAI’s large-scale language-generation model. Upon generating draft language, the author reviewed, edited, and revised the language to their own liking and takes ultimate responsibility for the content of this publication.
Source: ChatGPT5.2
* * *
Design is the soul
creating shape and form.
Edited:
Find your truth. Know your mind. Follow your heart. Love eternal will not be denied. Discernment is an integral part of self-mastery. You may share this post on a non-commercial basis, the author and URL to be included. Please note … posts are continually being edited. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2026 C.G. Garant.
No comments:
Post a Comment