Timothy Speed (2025)
This paper develops a structurally ontological threshold theory of world-formation and value stabilisation. Building on the concepts of the diversity threshold (D) and the value threshold (T), it is argued that reality emerges once systems exceed a critical folding intensity of difference, while value appears only when emergent forms cross the threshold of structural durability. These two thresholds do not describe separate processes, but two phases of a single ontological mechanism. World is generated at D, value stabilises at T; poverty, precarity, and invisibility mark the structural gap between the two. The ontological foundation of this model lies in a theory of ontological recurrence, in which emergence is not understood as the result of accumulation or innovation, but as a recurring transition of a system into its space of possibilities prior to stabilised representation. The D/T relation therefore does not describe market failure, but a systematic asymmetry between emergent reality and the conditions of its societal stabilisation. The central thesis is: reality exceeds what societies recognise as value. Modern economies do not fail due to a lack of work, but due to an inability to hold emergence. Care work, ecological regeneration, artistic research, and neurodivergent problem-mapping often operate above D, yet remain below T, thereby producing structural invisibility rather than inefficiency. The model of the Emergence Economy shifts the focus away from questions of distribution toward the conditions under which reality can appear as value. Wealth is understood as emergence-capacity, stability as tension-bearing capacity. The paper outlines the structural logic, the operator-based falsification criteria, and the research programme of an ontological threshold theory that is testable across cognitive, social, and economic systems. This paper functions as an interface text within a larger operator-based research corpus. Core concepts are applied here, not re-derived. The underlying research operates in a non-linear, rhythmically recursive epistemic mode grounded in an autistic form of structural perception; the present text provides an interface translation for academic contexts.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17990456
Keywords: all–nothing paradox, ontological openness, world-formation, formal closure, artificial systems, complexity limits, non-representational ontology, operator-based epistemology
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