Processioning (paysage)

David Morris's neologism for the temporal-distributive structure of quantum-mechanical dynamics, replacing the wavefunction-realist image of "guiding-branching" as a process spatially distributed alongside the apparatus. In English, a "procession" is a parade and "processioning" designates the process of walking around a region to determine its boundaries. Temporal moments are joined in succession as a temporal whole; processioning joins such succession-moments over a region. The French analogue is paysage — a landscape-passage. Morris notes: "We lack suitable words for these concepts" (morris-2024-wild-structure-melting-time p. 163).

Processioning is the temporal-ontological successor to Feynman's "sum over histories" — the calculation method that derives the probability distribution of a particle's trajectories by treating it as if traversing all possible paths it can take. Morris's contribution: where Feynman's "sum over histories" is treated by mainstream physics as a calculational fiction, processioning takes the temporal-distributive structure as ontologically real — but read in time, not space.

Key Points

  • A processioning is a temporal paysage — a landscape-passage joining succession-moments over a region. The image is a parade walking through a countryside, where the walking and the countryside are inseparable.
  • Replaces the wavefunction-realist's "guiding-branching." Wavefunction realism (states, pilot waves, many-worlds) treats QM dynamics as a spatially distributed guiding-branching process running alongside the apparatus. Processioning is the temporal-distributive replacement.
  • Echoes Feynman's "sum over histories" but ontologizes it. Feynman's calculation method becomes Morris's ontological structure: what's really there is a temporal-distributive paysage, not a sum-of-paths abstraction.
  • Operates as the carrier of wild structure's dynamics. A wild structure's redistribution of change-dynamics as time-forms is what a processioning is.
  • Grounded in melting-time (temps fondant). A processioning's "elsewhen" past — the past that has never been a present — is the indeterminate change-substrate out of which processioning generates its time-form on the fly.
  • The paysage figure is shared with MP's institution / Stiftung. Where institution names the structural opening of a temporal dimension, processioning names the kinetic movement that traces that dimension out — like a traveler walking through a changing countryside continuously altered by his own advance (the Humanism and Terror image at p. 94, transposed by Morris onto photons at article p. 168).

What the Concept Does

Processioning performs three argumentative jobs in morris-2024-wild-structure-melting-time:

  1. It dissolves the "delayed choice paradox." When a second beam splitter is added to a quantum-optics setup after the photon would have already traversed the first splitter, the standard interpretive options — particle on path P1 or P2; signal traveling backward in time — both fail. Processioning dissolves the paradox: the photon's behavior was processioning over the entire time of the trial, distributing itself temporally. There is no "delayed choice" because there is no pre-given time-frame in which one moment is "earlier" and another "later" relative to the system's own dynamics. Time-orders are generated by the processioning, not presupposed for it.

  2. It operationalizes the "deepening of the now into and out of its 'elsewhen' past." MP's "an original past, a past that has never been a present" (PhP 289) is the philosophical resource for processioning's structure. Processioning is what such a past does: it operates creatively in the now, distributing the now's dynamics over a temporal paysage rather than localizing them in a vanishing present. The mathematics of the wavefunction is a symptom of, and indirectly indicates, this temporality.

  3. It rotates "guiding-branching" from spatial parallelism to temporal deepening. Wavefunction realists imagine the guiding-branching as running spatially elsewhere (pilot wave alongside apparatus, many-worlds branching in parallel reality). Morris rotates it into time and the past — the branchings are not in spatial parallel reality but in the burgeoning past from which the now is generated.

What It Rejects

  • Spatial guiding-branching as ontologically apposite. Pilot waves, many-worlds, quantum states distributed in space — all flatten the temporal paysage into invisible spatial doubles. Processioning rotates this back into time.
  • The vanishing-present model of physical processes. A "now" localized to an instant cannot carry processioning's structure. What carries the photon's dynamics is not a sequence of spatial nows but a temporal landscape-passage in which the past operates creatively.
  • Eternal block-time as alternative. Processioning is not a special case of block-time. Block-time treats all moments as eternally present in a 4D manifold; processioning treats time as generated locally on the fly, with the past creative in the now in a way the now is not creative in itself.
  • Sum-over-histories as merely calculational fiction. Processioning ontologizes what Feynman's path-integral treats as a useful abstraction. The temporal-distributive structure is real; the abstraction is the conceptual tool used to articulate the reality.

Stakes

If processioning is accepted, two things change in the philosophy of QM and of time:

First, the spatial-realism-vs-subjectivism dichotomy in QM interpretation is dissolved. The standard options — wavefunction realism (spatially real entities) or QBism (purely subjective probabilities) — both presuppose that ontological options are spatial. Processioning offers a third option: the wavefunction indirectly indicates a temporal-distributive reality. This is what Morris calls the "temporal probabilism" of morris-2024-wild-structure-melting-time §3.

Second, MP's expression / paradox of expression in human creativity is given a physical-ontological register. The paradox — that what we were trying to say at the beginning becomes clear only at the end — is not a peculiarity of human creativity but a feature of any temporal paysage. Processioning is the structure of expression in matter: in changing the way they move, photons "create the line of history, of time, that is engendered behind them" (Morris p. 168). This is a strong unification: human expression and physical processioning share an ontological structure.

The risk: processioning is a single-source neologism. Whether it has the conceptual durability of standard MP-corpus terms (institution, écart, chiasm, flesh) depends on whether other sources independently articulate the same temporal-distributive structure under similar vocabulary.

Connections

  • is the carrier of wild-structure's dynamics — processioning is what wild structures do as they redistribute change-dynamics as time-forms.
  • operates out of melting-time — temps fondant is the indeterminate change-substrate from which processioning generates its time-form.
  • is the kinetic-ontological correlate of institution — institution is the structural opening of a temporal dimension; processioning is the kinetic movement that traces it out. See institution §"Time as the Model of Institution" for the IP 36/7 anchor.
  • is grounded in MP's "an original past, a past that has never been a present" (PhP 289) — see PhP §"Original past" for the textual context.
  • replaces "guiding-branching" — the wavefunction-realist's spatial image of QM dynamics is rotated into a temporal paysage.
  • ontologizes Feynman's "sum over histories" — what Feynman treats as a calculational fiction Morris treats as ontologically real (in time, not space).
  • figured by the Humanism and Terror (1969, p. 94) traveler image — the traveler in changing countryside, continuously altered by his own advance, is the figure of processioning. See H&T for the textual context. Morris transposes the image onto photons at p. 168.
  • implements MP's paradox of expression in physical matter — see primordial-expression for the human-creative side.
  • converges with volant — processioning's "deepening of the now into and out of its 'elsewhen' past" is what the volant / ur-volant mechanism enables. The volant is the figure for the inertial-momentum aspect; processioning is the figure for the kinetic-distributive aspect.
  • contrasts with the vanishing-present model (a now localized to an instant cannot carry processioning's structure).
  • contrasts with eternal block-time (block-time treats all moments as eternally present in a 4D manifold; processioning treats time as generated on the fly).

Open Questions

  • Cross-source attestation. Morris is the wiki's only source for "processioning." Whether the term has uptake in subsequent philosophy of physics or in continental phenomenology is unknown.
  • Relation to Stiftung / institution-as-temporal-dimension. Morris's paysage / processioning shares structural features with MP's Stiftung: both are forms of temporal opening. The relation is not fully developed in Morris's article. Are processioning and Stiftung the same concept under different names? Or does processioning add the kinetic-distributive aspect that Stiftung leaves implicit?
  • Relation to Feynman path-integrals. Morris's note that processioning "echoes physicist Richard Feynman's insight" raises the question of whether processioning is a philosophical interpretation of Feynman's mathematics or a more general ontological structure of which Feynman's path-integral is one expression. The article does not resolve this.
  • The H&T traveler image. Transposing the image from political-historical action onto photon dynamics is a striking move — see morris-2024-wild-structure-melting-time §"What's Not Obvious" for the diagnostic significance. Whether the transposition is rigorous or merely suggestive is open. The strength of the image (obstacles becoming openings, shortest paths turning out longest) is precisely what makes it conceptually rich; whether photons "really" move that way is a different question.

Sources

  • morris-2024-wild-structure-melting-time — §4 (full elaboration), §6 (closing transposition onto photons via H&T traveler image). The neologism is introduced explicitly at p. 163: "We lack suitable words for these concepts!"
  • Indirect anchors via Morris:
    • merleau-ponty-1947-humanism-and-terror (1969 trans.), p. 94 — the traveler image.
    • PhP 289 — "an original past, a past that has never been a present."
    • Feynman's path-integral formulation of QM (referenced via "sum over histories" but not cited).