Wild Structure and Melting Time: On Quantum Mechanics and Matter as Change in Merleau-Ponty's Temporal Ontology

Author: David Morris (Concordia University) Year: 2024 Type: paper (journal article) Journal: Chiasmi International 26 (2024), pp. 157-173. DOI: 10.5840/chiasmi20242616

A philosophical essay that reads contemporary quantum mechanics through Merleau-Ponty's mature ontology — and reads MP's mature ontology back through QM. Morris's central thesis: matter is best reconceptualized not as spatial extension but as temporal change. Quantum mechanical systems behave as Merleau-Pontian "wild structures" that generate visible, determinate time-orders ("time-forms") out of an inapparent, indeterminate "melting time" (temps fondant) — a phrase Morris draws from an unpublished MP working note ("Janvier 1959. Pluralité des temps. Unicité du temps," BNF vol. VIII, Notes 1958-1959, p. [253]). Where the Structure of Behaviour articulated structure through spatial redistribution (soap bubbles, oil drops), Morris argues that MP's mature ontology requires rotating this redistribution into the temporal: structures distribute change-dynamics as time-forms, not forces as spatial forms. This rotation lets us interpret quantum phenomena (delayed choice, entanglement, time-crystals) as ontologically real — real in time, not real as spatial doubles to the apparatus. The article is also a corrective to the standard reception of late MP as turned away from the physical sciences: working notes Lefort omitted from V&I reveal MP pursuing ontology through biology and relativity and quantum mechanics, including the "ontogenesis of time" and temps fondant notes.

The paper introduces five neologisms with concept-page weight — melting time (temps fondant); wild structure (quantum systems as MP-structures generating their own time-orders); processioning / paysage (the temporal-distributive structure that replaces spatial guiding-branching); ontogenesis of time (the local generation of time-orders out of melting time); and imperfecting expression (Morris's principle deforming Smolin's neo-Leibnizian "maximize difference"). It also extends MP's volant (the flywheel of inertia, volant) into an ur-volant — time itself as continually generated on the fly.

Core Arguments

  1. Sense arises within structures whose redistributions are qualitative leaps expressing immanent law.

    • Claim: SB's structure-concept captures a "principle of discontinuity" — systems redistribute their forces in a "qualitatively different order which is nevertheless another expression of [their] immanent law" (SB 148/137). This is what gives "conditions for a development by leaps or crises, for an event or for history."
    • Because: MP's foundational reading of structure already identifies a discontinuous ground for sense, écart, and history — but Structure of Behaviour's exemplars are still spatial (soap bubbles, oil drops).
    • Against: continuity-only readings of nature; wavefunction realism's reduction of structure to spatial branching alongside the apparatus.
    • Location: §1, p. 157.

  2. MP never abandoned the physical sciences; this fact is obscured by Lefort's editorial omissions.

    • Claim: Many working notes on physics and biology were omitted from Lefort's selection of V&I working notes. Notes survive (BNF) under the folder title "The Ontology of Wild Being (in particular life)" — including a January 1959 note on "ontogenesis of time" / "melting time" responding to the unicity-vs-plurality of time problem. MP studied Bergson and Whitehead on matter in the Nature lectures (LN).
    • Because: archival evidence + the surviving notes in V&I that do refer to particle physics (V&I 33-34/16-17) and a March 1959 note (V&I 235-6/185-6) on short-lived particles in relation to time.
    • Against: the standard reception that late MP turned away from physical sciences toward perception and flesh.
    • Location: §1, pp. 157-158.

  3. For MP, time is the ontological clue to how matter engenders a nature that gives birth to sense.

    • Claim: Time-form is what allows redistribution of change-dynamics to manifest as ordered, apparent time — what Morris calls (after MP's note) the "ontogenesis of time" out of an inapparent "melting time." This is the deeper ontological thesis underlying SB's principle of discontinuity. Time is "the model of institution itself" (IP 36/7); time "continues" only because it "was instituted," because it discontinuously erupted out of nothing. Time is "total because it is partial," its continuity is eruptive.
    • Because: MP's own formulations (SB, IP), the unpublished note on temps fondant, and the structural fit with quantum-mechanical phenomena.
    • Against: readings that locate MP's late ontology primarily in flesh, écart, or chiasm without recognizing time's foundational status.
    • Location: §1, p. 158.

  4. Wheeler's delayed choice experiment manifests indeterminate being.

    • Claim: The delayed-choice experiment (one or two beam splitters; with both in place the photon never registers at $D_B$; the second splitter can be added after the photon would have already traversed the first; even with photons from billions-of-years-old galaxies the result holds) shows that the photon's behavior cannot be reduced to particle-on-path or wave-on-paths or backward signal in time. Wheeler's "great smoky dragon" — sharp at tail (start) and mouth (detection), smoke in between — figures this indeterminate being.
    • Because: experimental data + Wheeler's own metaphor (Ananthaswamy 2018 quoting Wheeler).
    • Against: any reading that takes the photon as determinately particle or wave at all moments.
    • Location: §2, pp. 159-161.

  5. Morris transforms QBism: what the wavefunction indirectly indicates is real in being, in time.

    • Claim: QBism rightly insists the wavefunction does not describe spatial states or pilot waves or many worlds; it describes the evolution of subjective expectations (bettabilitarianism). But QBists also have an indirect ontology — and what is indirectly indicated is that being is creative (Jamesian, now Merleau-Pontian sense). Morris's modification: the radical change and probability indirectly indicated by the wavefunction is real within being. Not the wavefunction is real; rather, the change indirectly indicated by it is real. This requires reconceiving time itself.
    • Because: QBism's empirical adequacy + its phenomenological resonance + MP's indirect ontology.
    • Against: wavefunction realism (states, pilot waves, many-worlds); QBism in its purely-subjective ontological reticence.
    • Location: §§2-3, pp. 160-162.

  6. Bergson 1896 anticipated wave-particle duality as a temporal duality.

    • Claim: Bergson's Matière et mémoire MM 74 ("subject-object questions must be posed as a function of time rather than space") and MM 226, 230 (red light "contracts" vast electromagnetic vibrations into one qualitative effect now) anticipates wave-particle duality through a temporal register: red light's two modes are protracted "when" (the wave) vs. contracted past punching into the now (the particle). Bergson "doesn't get the energy part" but conceptualizes this duality as temporal rather than spatial juxtaposition.
    • Because: direct reading of MM passages.
    • Against: reception of Bergson as opposed to physics.
    • Location: §3, p. 162. Limitation noted: Bergson misses the energy correspondence of wave packet to spectrum.

  7. "Processioning" replaces spatial guiding-branching with a temporal-distributive structure.

    • Claim: A new conceptual term — processioning, French paysage — names what really guides and grounds quantum phenomena. In English, a "procession" is a parade and "processioning" designates walking around a region to determine its boundaries. Temporal moments are joined as a temporal whole; processioning joins succession-moments over a region. Echoes Feynman's "sum over histories." The wavefunction-realist's "guiding-branching" is flattened into invisible spatial doubles; processioning rotates that into a deepening of the now into and out of its 'elsewhen' past.
    • Because: Conceptual neologism motivated by the inadequacy of existing terminology ("we lack suitable words").
    • Against: spatial-distributive interpretations of QM dynamics.
    • Location: §4, p. 163.

  8. The paradox of expression in matter: delayed choice is what creative expression already is in human production.

    • Claim: MP's "paradox of expression" — what we were trying to say at the beginning of an expression, which turned out to have been driving our creative expression all along, is not clear until the end. In matters of human expression, "delayed choice" is familiar, not weird. The weirdness comes from claiming this about physical matter — but only weird if we take the structural carrier to be spatially localizable now. If we take the carrier to be a structural processioning that redistributes through an always-creative past that has never been a completed and full present, then delayed choice in physics is no longer paradoxical.
    • Because: structural analogy between MP's expression-paradox and the temporal logic of QM phenomena.
    • Against: the assumption that physical matter must be spatially localizable now in order for sense to be made of its dynamics.
    • Location: §4, pp. 163-164.

  9. Quantum systems are wild structures: their redistribution is of change-dynamics as time-forms, not of forces as spatial forms.

    • Claim (central thesis): What's redistributed in a quantum system is the system's behavior as time-manifesting: the system resolves its underlying change-dynamic by distributing its changing behavior over/as a particular time-form in the first place. This is a 'temporal analogue' of how a soap bubble resolves its energetic change-dynamic via spatial form. Locally, this is an "ontogenesis of time." This grasps quantum systems as 'wild structures' originating in 'wild being': nature wasn't already prepared to 'branch' this way — the principle of discontinuity is in the operations of nature itself.
    • Because: the experimental anomalies + the conceptual rotation from spatial to temporal.
    • Against: spatial guiding-branching (wavefunction realism).
    • Location: §5, pp. 164-165.

  10. The change/time distinction (Aristotle) lets achronic cosmoi be conceptually cogent.

    • Claim: Aristotle: time is the form of change, change is time's matter. Newton needs absolute time; Einstein refutes — time-form is not in soul or transcendental subjects but accessed only within changing dynamic relations as clocks. Distinguishing change (dynamical condition) from time-forms makes it conceptually cogent that change might proceed in such a way as not to enable the appearing of clocks. Cellular automata thought experiment: Conway's Life supports oscillators and Turing computers (digital clocks built within Life). Modify rules sufficiently → "achronic" automata: dynamic change without time-order manifest within the cosmos itself. Random shuffling approaches indistinguishability from ordered states.
    • Because: Aristotle (Roark 2011, Sentesy 2020); Newton-Einstein (DiSalle 2006, Weatherall 2016); cellular automata as toy models.
    • Against: the assumption that any cosmos with change must have manifest time-order.
    • Location: §5, pp. 165-166.

  11. Morris deforms Smolin: principle is "imperfecting expression" not "maximize difference."

    • Claim (Morris's signature contribution): Smolin's neo-Leibnizian model treats relational change-dynamics as monads in a topological network with a basic rule of maximize difference (against identity of indiscernibles). This generates locality as non-absolute and entanglement as expression of maximizing difference. Morris softens that constraint and radicalizes change. Indeterminate being operates to generate/express causality, distributing change in spatio-temporal forms with imperfections (entanglements). It is precisely this imperfection that enables being to be indeterminate, to be as doing the work of expressing. Principle isn't maximizing difference but 'imperfecting expression'.
    • Because: Smolin's framework presumes determinate identities (Leibnizian); Morris's "Merleau-Bergsonian" framework refuses determinate-identity bedrock and reads the imperfections as constitutive of expression's possibility.
    • Against: Leibnizian determinate-identity ontologies (including Smolin's residual Leibnizianism).
    • Location: §6, pp. 167-168.

  12. Time-crystals are the empirical model of wild-structure / time-form generation.

    • Claim: In time-crystals, a quantum system pumped with energy at period $P$ settles between pulses into a ground state and spontaneously breaks time-symmetry, manifesting state oscillations at a different period (a multiple of $P$). The oscillations are not driven by the outside pulse; the pulse pushes the system's "immanent law" into a quantum dynamic that resolves via changes redistributing behaviors regularly over time. This is a model of time-forming as expression of immanent change-dynamics — the analogue of how a soap-bubble resolves a dynamic problem by spatial distribution.
    • Because: Wilczek 2019, Ball 2018b, 2018c.
    • Against: any reading of quantum systems as merely spatial structures.
    • Location: §6, pp. 166-167.

Argumentative Movement

The article moves dialectically — not by deductive argumentation but by a series of rotations. Each rotation reframes a familiar concept under a different ontological register.

  • §1 sets the SB problem of structure (sense as discontinuous redistribution) and rotates it: from spatial soap-bubble to temporal temps fondant.
  • §2 introduces the QM phenomenon (delayed choice) and rotates it: from realist interpretations to QBism's indirect ontology.
  • §3 rotates QBism itself: from purely-subjective to ontologically real but in time, not space. Bergson is the philosophical hinge.
  • §4 rotates "guiding-branching" (the spatial image of QM dynamics) into "processioning" (temporal-distributive). The hinge is MP's paradox of expression: delayed choice is what creative expression already is.
  • §5 rotates the time-change relation: from time as substance/coordinate above change (Newton, Kant) to time-form as immanent in change-dynamics (Einstein, Aristotle reread). The cellular automata thought experiment makes "achronic cosmoi" conceptually cogent.
  • §6 rotates Smolin: from "maximize difference" to "imperfecting expression." Time-crystals are the empirical anchor; the Humanism and Terror traveler image is the closing figure.

The dialectical rhythm — rotation (not deduction) — is itself part of Morris's argument: the rotation from spatial to temporal cannot be made by inference within either framework; it is the conceptual gesture by which one moves from one ontological register to another.

Key Findings

  • Matter is temporal change, not spatial extension. This is the deepest ontological inversion. The substrate metaphor is wrong: what carries quantum dynamics is not invisible spatial doubles (pilot waves, many-worlds, quantum states) but a temporal processioning — a deepening of the now into and out of its 'elsewhen' past.

  • Time is generated locally, not given globally. Time-orders are not a fixed framework above change; they are the form that change distributes itself as, locally and on the fly. This is the "ontogenesis of time."

  • Quantum systems are wild structures in the strict MP sense. They are not classical structures (soap bubbles, crystals) where discontinuity is observer-side. They are structures where nature itself leaps — where the order arises from changes that ontologically generate, institute, the orders they turn out to have followed.

  • Late MP is recoverable as a philosopher of physics, not just of perception. The Lefort-omitted notes on physics, the LN engagements with Bergson and Whitehead, the IP "time is the model of institution itself" — together these resource a reading of MP's mature ontology as a temporal ontology with serious physical-scientific stakes.

  • The paradox of expression operates in physical matter. What in human creativity is the paradox of expression (the end clarifies what the beginning was already trying to say) operates in physical matter as delayed choice — not weirdly, but as the standard temporal logic of expression in being.

Methodology

Morris does not engage MP's archive directly in this paper (he says: "Here, I do not pursue this point through Merleau-Ponty's own working notes or remarks on matter in LN. Instead, in Merleau-Pontian fashion, I engage with quantum mechanical results not available to Merleau-Ponty"). The method is analogical-extensional: take MP's structural concepts (structure, écart, expression, institution, volant, original past, indeterminate being / wild being) and apply them to quantum phenomena that MP could not have known about, looking for mutual illumination rather than confirmation.

The paper also uses thought experiments (chess-game-as-shuffled-states; cellular automata with shuffled rules) to model otherwise abstract conceptual claims (time-ordering as immanent in dynamics; achronic cosmoi as conceptually cogent). These are illustrative rather than demonstrative.

The closing image — the traveler in changing countryside from MP's Humanism and Terror (1969, p. 94) — is offered not as evidence but as a figure that captures the structural claim. This is consistent with MP's own use of such figures (the volant, the chiasm, the watermark).

Concepts Developed

Concepts where Morris does original work — including five neologisms:

  • melting-time — temps fondant. The article's signature concept. Indeterminate, invisible, undifferentiated change prior to time-orders, generating time-orders through its dynamics. The phrase comes from MP's unpublished "Janvier 1959" note in BNF; Morris's contribution is to radicalize it as a concept of physical ontology.

  • wild-structure — quantum systems understood as Merleau-Pontian structures arising within wild being, generating their own time-orders rather than presupposing them. Morris's neologism (the qualifier "wild" applied to "structure" rather than to "being" or "life" alone is itself the diagnostic move).

  • processioning — neologism designating the temporal-distributive structure that replaces spatial guiding-branching as the ontology of QM dynamics. French paysage (landscape-passage). Echoes Feynman's "sum over histories."

  • ontogenesis-of-time — local generation of time-orders out of melting time / change. Drawn from MP's unpublished note. The local 'ontogenesis of time' is what lets us grasp 'principle of discontinuity' in operations of nature itself.

  • imperfecting-expression — Morris's signature principle, deforming Smolin's neo-Leibnizian "maximize difference." The principle of indeterminate being's expression: imperfections (entanglements, weird quantum phenomena) are not failures but constitutive of being's indeterminate latitude to do the work of expressing.

  • Achronic cosmoi / achronic change — toy model (cellular automata with shuffled rules) of a cosmos where there is dynamic change but no time-order manifest within. Folded into melting-time as the limit case showing change-without-time-form is conceptually cogent.

  • Ur-volant — extension of MP's volant (the flywheel of inertia, volant) from "passive sustains active in the engine of life" to "the very order of time being generated on the fly." A new register beyond Saint Aubert's mechanical/organic/existential triple. Single attestation but coordinated with the volant's existing wiki development.

Concepts Referenced

Concepts the article touches on but does not develop in original ways:

  • wild-being — explicitly extended from "wild being in life" (the standard framing per the Lefort folder title "Ontology of Wild Being (in particular life)") to "wild being in physics." The extension is a Morris contribution but operates via the existing concept.
  • institution — IP 36/7 "time is the model of institution itself" cited as authorizing the temporal-ontogenesis reading. Morris does not develop institution in original ways but mobilizes it.
  • ecart — used in passing for the écart of time from change (a new register beyond the wiki's diacritic and bodily-reflexivity registers).
  • volant — IP 242/185 volant cited; Morris extends to ur-volant (concept-page-worthy if it had multi-source attestation).
  • indirect-ontology — QBism's "indirect" ontology corresponds to (without being the same as) MP's indirect ontology.
  • primordial-expression / lived-gestural-expression — MP's expression as paradox is mobilized but the existing wiki pages are not directly used; Morris's "imperfecting expression" is a new register.
  • chiasm — referenced once via the broader Merleau-Pontian framework but not centrally.
  • flesh-as-element — referenced once: "figure/ground structures as arising within flesh, via écart."
  • changement-quantite-qualite — implicit but not invoked. The SB-structure's "qualitatively different order" via continuous external forces is structurally akin to MP's later degeneration thesis (continuous quantitative change → qualitative leap), though that wiki page is in the political/Marxist register and Morris does not name the parallel.
  • Original past, past that has never been a present (PhP 289) — MP's account of the presupposed past not constituted by present. Mobilized in §4 to ground processioning's paysage structure.

Terminology

For this article (English original), key terms include:

English Morris's coinage / context Source
melting time temps fondant (MP unpublished note) MP BNF, §1
wild structure qualifier "wild" applied to "structure" Morris's neologism, §§1, 5, 6
processioning English neologism; paysage in French Morris, §4
ontogenesis of time local generation of time-orders MP unpublished note + Morris, §§1, 5
imperfecting expression (signature principle) Morris, §6
ur-volant extension of MP's volant Morris extending IP 242/185, §4
smoky dragon Wheeler's photon image Wheeler in Ananthaswamy 2018, §2
guiding-branching wavefunction-realist image Morris's diagnostic phrase, §§2, 4, 5, 6
achronic cosmoi dynamic-change-without-time-order Morris (cellular-automata model), §5

Key Passages

"external forces which increase or decrease in continuous manner [push the system past a threshold such that it] redistributes its own forces in a qualitatively different order which is nevertheless another expression of its immanent law." (SB 148/137, quoted by Morris, p. 157) — anchors the SB-structure premise of the entire article.

"Structure and law are therefore two dialectical moments and not two powers [puissances] of being" (SB 153/142, quoted by Morris, p. 158) — anchors Morris's reading that structure and law are generated from an impuissance of indeterminate being.

"time is the model of institution itself" (IP 36/7, quoted by Morris, p. 158) — anchors the temporal-institution reading.

Time "continues" only because it "was instituted," because it discontinuously erupted out of nothing. Time is "total because it is partial," its continuity is eruptive. (paraphrase from IP, Morris p. 158)

"an original past, a past that has never been a present" (PhP 289, quoted by Morris, p. 163) — anchors the processioning-as-deepening-into-elsewhen-past reading.

Wheeler's "great smoky dragon": "The mouth of the dragon is sharp, where it bites" the detector; its tail "is sharp, where the photon starts," but "What the dragon does or looks like in between we have no right to speak" (Wheeler in Ananthaswamy 2018, Morris p. 160) — anchors the indeterminate-being reading of QM phenomena.

Bergson: "questions concerning subject and object, their distinction and union, must be posed as a function of time rather than space" (MM 74, quoted by Morris, p. 162) — the philosophical hinge of §3.

"what's redistributed is the system's behaviour as time-manifesting: the system resolves its underlying change-dynamic by distributing its changing behaviour over/as a particular time-form in the first place. This is a 'temporal analogue' of the way a soap bubble resolves its energetic change-dynamic by distributing its material behaviour over/as a particular spatial form." (Morris, p. 165) — the central proposal.

"fundamental change dynamics in a 'melting-time' ontologically 'prior to' time-orders. Paradoxically, changes on this level are not bound by time-orders, yet generate changes that do manifest time-orders ('eventually'). This divergence/écart of time from change enables systems appearing as if they are signalling backward in time, whereas they are generating time-orders 'on the fly.'" (Morris, p. 165)

"Time-forms aren't (transcendentally) conditioned by observers counting time, but by and in change itself as dynamical condition of the appearing of clocks." (Morris, p. 165) — the Einstein-rereads-Aristotle move against Newton/Kant.

"The principle isn't maximizing difference but 'imperfecting expression'." (Morris, p. 168) — Morris's signature deformation of Smolin.

"it is precisely this imperfection that enables being to be indeterminate, to be as doing the work of expressing." (Morris, p. 168)

"we have to move into it not by any straight line that is always easy to trace, but by taking our bearings at every moment in a general situation which is changing, like a traveller who moves into a changing countryside continuously altered by his own advance, where what looked like an obstacle becomes an opening and where the shortest path turns out the longest." (MP, Humanism and Terror 1969, p. 94, quoted by Morris, p. 168) — the closing figure.

"But photons do not quite change the course of their history, it is rather the other way around: in changing the way they move they create the line of history, of time, that is engendered behind them. And the way they move changes because there are born along and out of this burgeoning past." (Morris, p. 168) — the article's most counterintuitive claim, applying processioning to subatomic particles.

"structure and law are generated from an impuissance of indeterminate being – which impuissance has to do with the power of time as real change not being determined in advance." (Morris on MP, p. 158) — anchors the silent-key impuissance as positive characterization of indeterminate being.

What's Not Obvious

Three things this article reveals that conventional summaries would miss:

  1. The article is structured as a series of rotations, not deductions. Each section rotates a familiar concept under a different ontological register: SB-structure rotated from spatial to temporal; QBism rotated from purely-subjective to ontologically-real-in-time; "guiding-branching" rotated from spatial doubles to processioning; Smolin rotated from "maximize difference" to "imperfecting expression." The rhythm — rotation rather than inference — is itself part of Morris's argument that one cannot move between ontological registers by deduction. Connects to MP's hyper-dialectic and to the dialectical mode of the late ontology more generally.

  2. The Bergson-anticipates-wave-particle-duality reading (§3, p. 162) is a serious historical-philological claim. Morris reads MM 226, 230 on red light's "contracted" vibrations as Bergson's 1896 anticipation of wave-particle duality conceptualized temporally — protracted "when" of the wave vs. contracted past punching into the now as particle. Morris notes Bergson "doesn't get the energy part" but the structural claim is that Bergson, in 1896, already had the conceptual resources to think wave-particle duality as a temporal duality. This bears on the henri-bergson entity page (which currently does not record this reading) and on MP's reception of Bergson as the proto-philosopher of temporal ontology.

  3. The closing image from Humanism and Terror (1969, p. 94) puts photons in the position of MP's revolutionary historical agent. The traveler in the changing countryside — where obstacles become openings and the shortest path turns out the longest — was MP's image of historical action under contingency. Morris applies it to subatomic particles: photons "create the line of history, of time, that is engendered behind them." This is a striking transposition: a passage from MP's political-philosophical work (currently anchored on the merleau-ponty-1947-humanism-and-terror source page) is here being re-read as a model of physical-ontological dynamics. The transposition signals that Morris's reading is not just an extension but a unification of MP's political-historical and physical-ontological registers under a single temporal-ontological framework.

Critique / Limitations

  • The bridge from human expression to physical matter is asserted, not derived. Morris admits "the weirdness is claiming this about physical matter" and offers MP's paradox of expression as an analogical resource. But the assumption that the same temporal logic operates in subatomic physics as in artistic expression is exactly what the paper is trying to establish, so the analogy cannot do all the argumentative work alone.

  • "Imperfecting expression" is asserted rather than argued for. Why is the imperfection of expression what enables indeterminacy? Why not see the imperfections (entanglement, weird non-locality) as failures of expression (per Smolin's "maximize difference" reading)? Morris's positive claim that imperfection is constitutive of being's indeterminate latitude needs more development than the article provides.

  • The cellular-automata thought experiment is illustrative, not demonstrative. It shows that "achronic cosmoi" are conceptually cogent. It does not show that the actual physical world is the kind of cosmos in which time is locally generated rather than globally given.

  • The connection between time-crystals and MP's structures is analogical. Time-crystals are pumped by external energy at period $P$; whether their ground-state oscillation breaks time-symmetry "spontaneously" in the sense Morris needs (i.e., that grounds Merleau-Pontian sense as wild structure) is interpretively rich but not strictly demonstrated. The analogy may be more or less close than Morris assumes.

  • Sparse engagement with primary MP archive. Morris's acknowledgement that he does not pursue the point through MP's working notes or LN leaves open whether the temps fondant note actually authorizes the rich ontological reading he gives it — or whether the note is a passing remark that Morris rationalizes into a doctrine. The unpublished note Morris cites is a single line title; his interpretation is rich.

Connections

  • extends wild-being — applies wild being beyond biology / life into philosophy of physics. Morris's reading is a non-obvious extension of the MP wiki's existing wild-being concept.
  • radicalizes institution — reads IP 36/7 ("time is the model of institution itself") as authorizing a temporal-ontogenesis reading of physical phenomena, not just biological/cultural institution.
  • applies primordial-expression to physical matter — the paradox of expression in human creativity is read as the same temporal logic that operates as "delayed choice" in QM phenomena.
  • contrasts with wavefunction realism — Morris's processioning-as-temporal opposes spatial guiding-branching of states / pilot waves / many-worlds.
  • transforms QBism — Morris reads QBism's purely-subjective interpretation of probabilities as missing the ontological reality of change indirectly indicated by the wavefunction.
  • deforms Smolin's neo-Leibnizian "maximize difference" — replaces with "imperfecting expression" via Merleau-Bergsonian rather than Leibnizian principles.
  • recovers Bergson's Matière et mémoire (1896) — argues Bergson anticipated wave-particle duality as temporal duality.
  • is a middle term between Humanism and Terror and the philosophy-of-physics register — the H&T traveler image is transposed onto photons.
  • converges with ecart — Morris's écart of time from change is a new temporal register.
  • extends volant into an ur-volant — time itself as continually generated on the fly.
  • resonates with indirect-ontology — QBism's indirect ontology corresponds to MP's.

Sources

  • MP primary texts cited (the article uses these MP abbreviations):

  • Bergson:

    • Matière et mémoire (Bergson 2010, ed. F. Worms, Le Choc Bergson, PUF) — pp. 74, 154, 226, 230.

  • Quantum mechanics literature (philosophy of physics):

    • Wheeler 1979 (Frontiers of Time); Wheeler 1983a ("Beyond the End of Time"); Wheeler 1983b ("Law Without Law"); Wheeler 1994 ("Time Today"); Miller and Wheeler 1984 ("Delayed-Choice Experiments and Bohr's Elementary Quantum Phenomenon").
    • Smolin 2013 (Time Reborn); Smolin 2015 ("Temporal naturalism"); Smolin 2018 ("Temporal relationalism," arXiv); Smolin and Unger 2015 (The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time).
    • Wilczek 2019 ("Crystals in Time"); Ball 2018a (Beyond Weird); Ball 2018b ("In Search of Time Crystals"); Ball 2018c ("Out of step with time").
    • Berghofer and Wiltsche 2024 (Phenomenology and QBism) — note 4 acknowledges this volume.
    • Ananthaswamy 2018 ("Closed Loophole Confirms the Unreality of the Quantum World," Quanta Magazine).
    • Barbour 1999 (The End of Time); Barbour 2001 (The Discovery of Dynamics).

  • Aristotle / philosophy of time:

    • Roark 2011 (Aristotle on Time); Sentesy 2020 (Aristotle's Ontology of Change).

  • Newton / Einstein:

    • DiSalle 2006 (Understanding Space-Time); Weatherall 2016 (Void).

  • Phenomenology of time:

    • Waldenfels 2000 ("Time Lag"); Mazis 2015 ("The Depths of Time in the World's Memory of Self").

The full bibliography (article pp. 169-172) lists 30+ items across MP, Bergson, philosophy of time, philosophy of physics, and QBism literature.