Timothy Speed

This paper clarifies an epistemic structure that has so far been rarely made explicit in academic research practice: a recursive, embodied mode of knowing that does not arise through the additive integration of external discourses, but through the cyclical unfolding of structurally bound experience. The point of departure is the analysis of a singular, long-term developed research practice whose internal logic is systematically misrecognized by established academic evaluation criteria. Whereas academic learning is typically organized as a linear, cumulative process in which knowledge is legitimized through discursive embedding and citation, the practice described here follows a non-additive, fractal-recursive logic. Early works already contain the structural cores of later theoretical development; later texts do not replace earlier ones, but retrospectively mirror, refine, and stabilize them. Knowledge thus emerges not primarily through the referencing of existing literature, but through embodied world-coupling, from which theoretical concepts emerge. The paper argues that the frequently criticized absence of early references in such work does not constitute an epistemic deficit, but rather expresses a different mode of knowledge production, in which citations serve a secondary function of resonance-testing rather than epistemic grounding. Finally, the paper shows why conventional academic evaluation criteria categorically fail to capture this mode, and why an explicit methodological recognition of recursive, embodied epistemologies is necessary in order to adequately evaluate certain forms of original theoretical work.

The present work develops a conceptual framework for the analysis of poverty-related forms of discrimination and violence in contemporary welfare regimes, with a particular focus on the German Hartz IV system, the subsequent Bürgergeld system, and the new basic income support scheme (2026). The point of departure is the observation that established concepts such as classism insufficiently capture central mechanisms of administrative dehumanization, epistemic dispossession, and the targeted production of vulnerability. On the basis of the longitudinal empirical corpus of work: Speed, T. (2025). SPEED’S WORK – An Autistic Intervention in the Concept of Work in the Age of AI and Robotics. Zenodo. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17826640 ISBN: 3819249281 (de) and ISBN: 3819277358 (en), the term povertism (poverty-based racism) is introduced as an independent analytical category. Povertism does not denote a mere stigmatization of already poor population groups, but rather a structural practice of the active production of poverty as a prerequisite for control, sanctioning, and social devaluation. In addition, a functional concept of right-wing radicalism is developed that is not tied to party-political self-ascriptions or extremist symbolism, but to human-rights-relevant criteria such as the systematic hierarchization of human dignity, the withdrawal of epistemic and existential rights, and the institutional legitimation of suffering. From a historical perspective, continuities with social-racist and eugenic patterns of thought are traced, without positing an identity-establishing equation with National Socialist crimes. The work explicitly understands itself as a conceptual clarification against the accusation of exaggeration and contributes to the theoretical grounding of critical research on welfare statehood, administrative violence, and the political economy of manufactured vulnerability.

This paper examines work-centered social systems such as the German Bürgergeld and the planned Grundsicherung as forms of institutionally organized structural violence. At its core is the thesis that these systems are not merely burdensome for neurodivergent people, but structurally hazardous to health and therefore legally unreasonable. Illness thus appears not as individual failure, but as a predictable system effect of a normative architecture of work and performance that systematically fails to accommodate neurodivergent modes of existence. The analysis is based on a longitudinal auto-ethnographic and artistic-research dataset that has developed over more than thirteen years (“Speed’s Work”), encompassing documented interactions with multiple job centers, medical institutions, social courts, and administrative bodies, and covering various reform phases of work-centered social systems (Hartz IV, Bürgergeld, transition to Grundsicherung). The aim is not statistical representativeness, but the reconstruction of structurally invariant mechanisms of effect. The evaluation identifies six central empirical findings: (1) an institutionally invariant escalation structure that is reproduced independently of individual behavior; (2) systematically enforced masking as an existential adaptation performance; (3) pathologization as a secondary system reaction to structural overload; (4) the independence of health-related harm from individual cooperation or refusal; (5) the resulting structural predictability of health damage; and (6) the epistemic added value of an autistic epistemic position for capturing implicit normative mechanisms of violence. On this basis, an expanded concept of violence is developed that integrates structural, administrative, classist, and ontological violence. The findings are contextualized constitutionally (Art. 1 and Art. 2 of the Basic Law), in terms of human rights (UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities), and internationally. The paper argues that work-centered social systems which systematically force neurodivergent people into illness-producing adaptation violate state protective obligations. Illness functions here as an indicator of a systemic misdesign that cannot be remedied through individual case corrections, but only through a structural reconfiguration of welfare-state security.

Black holes are regarded as paradigmatic boundary objects of modern physics. They simultaneously mark limits of empirical accessibility, theoretical inconsistencies, and metaphysical projection surfaces. In popular as well as speculative discourses, they are frequently interpreted as manifestations of a “nothing,” as cosmic singularities, or even as sources of emergent order. This paper advances a deliberately countervailing thesis: black holes are not a case of application of emergence, but an extreme case of its failure. On the basis of the MNO model (Minimal-Non-Object), which understands emergence not as an effect of energy or complexity but as the structural capacity to return into world-capable relation, black holes are analyzed as maximally indimergent systems. Their physical characteristics—event horizon, information paradox, observer-dependence, and the absence of reconstructable interior spaces—can be read consistently as expressions of a fully collapsed world-capability, without introducing new physical postulates. The contribution does not aim to replace or extend existing astrophysical theories. Instead, it shows that the MNO model enables a conceptual clarification by strictly distinguishing physical conservation, informational coding, and relational accessibility. On this basis, black holes appear not as gateways to an ontological “nothing,” but as boundary markers at which emergence, perspective, and recursive opening come to an end. In this way, black holes function within this approach as a negative foil for theories of emergence: they sharpen the concept of emergence itself by showing under which structural conditions world-formation is no longer possible.

The present text formulates an explicit ontological thesis that has already been implicitly contained in previous works on world-formation, the constructed observer, and ontological openness, but has so far not been articulated categorially: The observer is not an entity, not a subject, and not a localizable point in space, but a space-internal operation—more precisely, a topological inversion or folding of world. Observation is not understood here as the act of an inner-worldly agent, but as a structural response of space to ontological non-integrability. Where reality cannot be fully stabilized, space folds in such a way that perspective, coherence, and world can appear. In this sense, the observer is not the cause of world, but the form in which world organizes itself locally. This shift withdraws the ontological ground from the classical subject–object schema, representational models of knowledge, as well as agent-based observer theories. At the same time, it allows a new reading of central problems in physics, consciousness research, and epistemology, without introducing additional entities or mental instances. The text understands itself as a categorial clarification: not as a new theory of observation, but as a clarification of what observation is ontologically.

Renormalization is one of the most successful technical procedures in modern physics. It renders quantum field theories predictive by systematically absorbing divergences into redefined parameters. Despite its practical indispensability, its conceptual status remains unclear: renormalization stabilizes calculations without explicitly stating which kind of boundary assumption is thereby enacted. This paper argues that renormalization should not be understood primarily as a technical stopgap, but as an implicit boundary operation. Within the MNO (Minimal-Non-Object) approach, it is read as a formal response to integration limits: divergences appear not as mere calculational errors, but as signals of a formalism whose local predictive power can be secured only through active boundary management. The proposed reading neither alters the mathematical formalism nor the practical application of renormalization. It does, however, make visible that the Standard Model operatively manages its own boundary conditions without explicitly conceptualizing them. Renormalization is thus reclassified as a stabilizing, but not world-constituting, operation.

The so-called measurement problem of quantum mechanics is usually formulated as an epistemic problem: how does a determinate measurement outcome arise from a formally open state description? The prevailing answers either operate with additional entities (collapse, many worlds, consciousness, information) or with perspectival relativizations, without categorially clarifying the status of measurement itself. The present text proposes a different reading. Building on the MNO model of ontological recurrence and the determination of the observer as a spatial category, it is argued that the measurement problem is not a problem of knowledge, but a spatial–ontological boundary phenomenon. Measurement does not denote the access of an observer to a system, but an enforced stabilization of determinacy at the point where open physical dynamics are structurally no longer integrable. Within this framework, determinacy does not appear as the result of cognition, but as the minimal form of world under conditions of ontological overload. The measurement problem thus does not disappear through a new interpretation, but through the abandonment of a false categorial presupposition: the assumption that observation is primarily an epistemic event.

Vacuum energy occupies a peculiar dual role in modern physics. On the one hand, it is formally unavoidable: in quantum field–theoretical calculations it arises necessarily and enters the cosmological constant Λ. On the other hand, its calculated value is empirically catastrophically wrong, deviating by many orders of magnitude from the observed cosmological expansion. This tension is usually interpreted as a fine-tuning problem or as an indication of new physics. This paper argues that the tension is due less to missing dynamics than to a categorical overextension. Within the MNO (Minimal-Non-Object) framework, vacuum energy is not read as an ontological energy quantity, but as a residual quantity of a formalism that counts emergent difference even though it is designed exclusively for stabilization. In this reading, the cosmological constant does not appear as a physical object, but as a formal remainder of a boundary operation within a formalism that can secure stability without delivering ontological closure. The proposed reading alters neither the equations of general relativity nor the quantum field–theoretical formalism. It does, however, shift the conceptual status of Λ: from a mysterious energy of the vacuum to a marker of the boundary of what can be physically and stably measured. The cosmological constant problem is thus not solved, but categorically reclassified.

Research on savant phenomena and autism has long been shaped by a double narrowing. On the one hand, savant abilities are predominantly interpreted as isolated “islands of ability” or as curious extreme cases embedded in deficit-oriented profiles. On the other hand, autism is primarily described along scales of intelligence, performance, or adaptation, which systematically obscure structural differences in modes of knowing. Between these two poles lies a largely untheorized epistemic gap: forms of non-performative, structurally coherent cognition that cannot be adequately captured as either island abilities, high intelligence, or deficit. This paper introduces the concept of structural savantism as a conceptual transition to render this gap visible. Structural savantism denotes neither a clinical diagnosis nor an extension of existing typologies, but an epistemic configuration in which structure is not locally reproduced but veridically maintained across multiple levels. Unlike classical savant phenomena, this form of cognition is not bound to isolated skills but manifests as trans-domain invariance, operating without representational simplification or social simulation. The paper explicitly does not position structural savantism as a new category within savant research, but rather as a marker of its theoretical limitations. Drawing on a long-term documented autistic research practice, it is shown that certain epistemic profiles remain systematically invisible as long as savantism is primarily defined through performance and autism through deficit or compensation. In this sense, structural savantism functions as a bridging concept between savant research and autistic epistemology, contributing to the demystification of the circus-like and exceptionalist narratives surrounding savantism without romanticizing or idealizing it. The aim of this paper is not to introduce a new typology, but to shift the question itself: away from the classification of exceptional performances and toward the investigation of forms of cognition that sustain structural coherence without being institutionally visible or measurable. In doing so, the paper advances a theoretical decoupling of cognition from performance and opens a more precise framework for understanding savant phenomena and autism beyond deficit-oriented models. This contribution is to be read in the context of two previously published works on operator-based savant cognition and emergent approaches to autistic epistemology, and serves as a connective marker of the theoretical gap situated between them.

In physics, the speed of light is regarded as the upper limit of signal transmission and as a fundamental constant of spacetime. This description is empirically correct and formally sufficient. The present text argues, however, that the speed of light also possesses an ontological significance that has so far remained largely unthematized. Starting from an ontology of irreversible world-binding, it is shown that the speed of light does not merely limit how fast information can be transmitted, but marks what can become world-connectable at all. Everything that can be transmitted necessarily appears as the trace of a world-enactment that has already occurred. Presence itself is in principle not transmissible. Simulations—particularly formal models, digital representations, and AI systems—implicitly operate as if this boundary could be lifted. They treat world as if it were fully reconstructible, synchronizable, or resettable. The text shows that simulation does not fail due to technical insufficiencies, but due to an ontological boundary: the non-retractability of world-binding, which is structurally secured by the speed of light. The speed of light thus appears not as a property of light alone, but as a condition of world-capability itself. The paper does not present itself as a critique of physics, but as an ontological contextualization of its scope—and as a clarification of why simulation necessarily remains worldless, even when it is formally correct. The argument proceeds by ontological reconstruction rather than physical derivation.

Autistic persons are routinely subjected to welfare and labor enforcement regimes designed around neurotypical assumptions of regulation, motivation, and adaptability. These regimes are commonly framed as neutral, activating, or supportive. This paper argues that such framing is structurally flawed. Autism is not a disease or episodic impairment but an embodied mode of existence characterized by distinct forms of perception, regulation, and world-relation. When subsistence, legal status, or access to basic resources are conditioned on compliance with neurotypical norms, autistic persons are placed in situations of structural incompatibility that produce predictable harm. The paper develops a non-medicalized framework for understanding harm as an objective, foreseeable consequence of welfare coercion rather than as an individual pathology or subjective experience. Drawing on international human rights law, disability law, and comparative welfare regimes, it shows how continued enforcement under conditions of known incompatibility raises questions of state responsibility across jurisdictions. Using the UK Work Capability Assessment (WCA) as an empirical warning case, and referring to Germany as an illustrative jurisdiction, the paper argues that ignorance of harm can no longer be plausibly claimed. Where states continue to enforce structurally incompatible requirements despite available knowledge, legal responsibility is triggered—whether framed as negligence, failure to accommodate, or degrading treatment. The paper does not argue for automatic criminalization. Instead, it establishes a structural threshold beyond which welfare enforcement ceases to be legitimate governance and becomes legally accountable harm.

In current psychiatric and diagnostic practice, masking in autistic persons is predominantly interpreted as an exhausting act of adaptation, whose pathological relevance is assumed to manifest above all in visible failure, breakdown, or burnout. This reading has become established not only in everyday clinical contexts, but also in parts of neurodiversity-oriented research. The present paper argues that this interpretation rests on an implicit, normative ontology that treats neurotypical forms of existence as an unquestioned reference and renders autistic existence legible only in relation to deviation, deficit, or exhaustion. Starting from an ontological perspective on masking, the paper shows that masking is not primarily to be understood as self-denial or an attempt at adaptation, but as a situational act of translation, protection, and interface-work within structurally asymmetrical world architectures. The clinical reduction of masking to an indicator of exhaustion leads to a diagnostic short circuit: autistic competence, stability, and functional simulation are systematically interpreted as deception or compensatory over-adaptation, while autism is acknowledged as “authentic” only at the moment of decompensation. The paper analyses the resulting dynamic as an iatrogenic structure: diagnostic recognition is bound to visible failure, thereby generating an implicit pressure toward decompensation. In this framework, autistic burnout appears not merely as an individual consequence of masking, but as a structurally produced harm of a system that can read autistic existence only in the mode of dysfunction. The focus thus shifts from individual vulnerability to institutional responsibility. In conclusion, the paper argues for a fundamental revision of diagnostic concepts of masking. Masking must be understood as an ambivalent, context-dependent competence, not as a pathological condition. Without such a revision, psychiatry reproduces precisely those dynamics of exhaustion and breakdown that it claims to recognise and treat. Autistic burnout thus becomes visible less as a symptom of autistic existence than as a marker of an ontologically inadequate diagnostic practice.

This meta-paper consolidates and systematizes a series of legal and interdisciplinary works concerned with the relationship between neurodivergence, welfare state structures, the justice system, and state coercive power. Its point of departure is the observation that core legal and administrative structures—particularly in social law, administrative law, and criminal law—implicitly operate on neurotypical assumptions of existence and consequently pathologize, functionalize, or individualize neurodivergent forms of existence. The text develops the thesis that wherever subsistence-securing benefits, legal recognition, or criminal assessment are coupled to neurotypical standards of reasonableness, adaptation, and performance, a structural incompatibility emerges that has predictably harmful effects on neurodivergent persons. This harm is neither accidental nor a by-product of faulty case-by-case decision-making, but a necessary consequence of the underlying normative architecture of state systems. On the basis of the consolidated individual papers, a unified analytical and evaluative framework is elaborated: where (1) structural incompatibility between a form of existence and the normative order is present, (2) the resulting harms are foreseeable and known, and (3) existential dependency leaves no realistic option of withdrawal, state action can no longer be qualified as legitimate social or regulatory policy, but must be understood as a form of structural violence. This violence does not manifest primarily as discrete events, but architecturally—through attribution logics, fictions of reasonableness, the individualization of systemic harm, and institutional escalation mechanisms. The meta-paper demonstrates that classical legal instruments such as proportionality analysis, individualized case correction, or medical assessment systematically fail under these conditions, because they themselves form part of the structure of violence. At the same time, it is shown that an autistic epistemic position—particularly the perception of structural invariances across time, institutions, and fields of law—does not constitute a subjective bias, but rather an analytical resource for identifying institutional violence. The contribution positions itself as a foundational legal text at the intersection of social law, criminal law, disability law, and human rights. It aims to establish a new legal evaluative standard under conditions of real ontological diversity and to render visible state responsibility where it has hitherto been obscured by individualization, pathologization, and formal assumptions of neutrality.

One cannot exist and be understood at the same time – with this sentence the neurodivergent artist, researcher and activist Timothy Speed opened the research field of Autistic Epistemology – a new mode of thought in which autism is not an object but an origin of knowledge. He connects Critical Autism Studies, Artistic Research and Systems Theory into a unified ontology of the resonant. Speed belongs to the few thinkers who do not theorize posthumanism but live it. One of the overlooked systems thinkers of our time – who spoke of “resonance” long before Hartmut Rosa, unfolding an understanding of reality as cyclical, embodied interaction, which brings together economic, social and energetic processes and thus – similar to the Nobel Prize–winning economists of market and behavioural economics Mokyr, Aghion and Howitt – anticipated early on the end of linear rationality and the necessity of a relational economy. He delivers not only a contribution to autism research but a fundamental theory of perception, work and existence in the age of overstimulation. His work stands in the line of paradigmatic turns that do not speak about deviation but generate knowledge from within it – comparable to Fanon, Haraway, Deleuze or Manning. Speed reveals the ontological rift between neurodivergent and neurotypical people and transforms not only the Double Empathy Problem, but also our understanding of masking and of reality itself. They cannot understand shows that every existence is a distortion – and that neurodivergence might be the key to understanding this refraction as a creative force.

The present volume examines the political, epistemic, and economic structures through which modern welfare states produce, stabilize, and functionalize social vulnerability. The point of departure is the observation that poverty, institutional marginalization, and epistemic invisibility cannot be understood merely as accidental side effects of social systems, but frequently arise from specific administrative logics, knowledge orders, and labour regimes. The first contribution develops the concept of povertism as an analytical category describing mechanisms through which poverty is not merely administered but actively produced and deployed as an instrument of social discipline. Using the German Hartz IV and Bürgergeld systems as central examples, the analysis shows how administrative procedures, sanction regimes, and categorical classifications generate structural vulnerability while simultaneously delegitimizing the knowledge and experiences of those affected. In this context, a functional concept of right-wing radical effects is proposed that does not refer to ideological self-descriptions but to institutional practices in which human dignity becomes effectively conditionalized. The second contribution extends this analysis to the political economy of knowledge production. It examines a largely overlooked form of structural exploitation: the exploitation of neurodivergent epistemic labour. Many forms of long-term analysis, theoretical innovation, and cultural production emerge under conditions of institutional distance and material insecurity, while their results may simultaneously circulate within scientific, cultural, or political discourses. This constellation leads to a systematic decoupling of epistemic production from economic recognition. The volume brings together perspectives from political economy, Critical Disability Studies, theories of epistemic injustice, and critical analyses of state administration. It argues that poverty, institutional marginalization, and epistemic invisibility in modern knowledge societies should not be understood solely as social problems but as structural components of existing orders of power and knowledge. Against this background, the volume raises the question under which institutional and economic conditions socially necessary forms of work—particularly long-term epistemic labour—can be stabilized. Models of universal social security, such as the Universal Care Income, appear in this context not only as social policy reforms but also as possible infrastructural conditions for sustaining forms of knowledge production that cannot easily be integrated into existing labour and value regimes.

The present volume brings together four contributions that examine the structural relationship between neurodivergence, welfare-state institutions, and legal evaluative practices. The point of departure is the observation that modern welfare and legal systems operate on implicit assumptions of normality that presuppose neurotypical forms of communication, employment trajectories, conflict regulation, and social adaptation. For individuals whose modes of living and working diverge from these assumptions, systematic misinterpretations, institutional conflicts, and forms of structural vulnerability frequently arise. The contributions analyze these dynamics from several complementary perspectives. A first focus concerns the interaction between neurodivergent persons and welfare-state institutions. The analyses show that administrative and legal procedures often interpret behaviors as deficits that are in fact expressions of neurodivergent perceptual and communicative styles. The resulting escalation dynamics therefore do not primarily stem from individual incapacity but from structural incompatibilities between neurodivergent ways of living and institutional expectation structures. A second line of inquiry addresses the question of epistemic authority within legal contexts. The contributions investigate how statements made by neurodivergent individuals about their own life situations are frequently relativized or reinterpreted in administrative and judicial proceedings. This dynamic produces forms of epistemic disenfranchisement in which affected persons are no longer treated as reliable sources regarding their own needs and experiences. A third analytical perspective focuses on the institutional organization of social security. Using central instruments of German social law—particularly the concept of the Bedarfsgemeinschaft—the contributions demonstrate how welfare systems organize subsistence security relationally and thereby generate dependency structures and conflict dynamics that are particularly burdensome for neurodivergent individuals as well as for non-standardized forms of work. Taken together, the contributions argue that many conflicts between neurodivergent individuals and state institutions do not primarily arise from personal deficits but from structural mismatches between institutional systems and neurodivergent modes of existence. Under conditions of existential dependency, these mismatches can produce predictable forms of institutional harm. The volume therefore contributes to a critical analysis of welfare-state institutions from the perspective of neurodivergent experience and asks under which structural conditions systems of law, administration, and social security provide protection—and under which conditions they generate predictable forms of institutional harm.

This volume brings together three contributions that address a shared theoretical and legal question: under what conditions do forms of structural violence toward neurodivergent people arise, and why do these forms of violence frequently remain invisible within modern institutional systems. The point of departure is the observation that contemporary social, legal, and administrative orders implicitly rely on assumptions about a uniform, neurotypical form of human existence. Perception, communication, work capacity, self-regulation, and social interaction are treated as general standards. Forms of existence that structurally diverge from these assumptions tend to appear within this framework either as illness, as individual deficit, or as insufficient adaptation. The contributions develop an ontological and legal-theoretical perspective for analyzing this problem. At the center lies the thesis that many conflicts between neurodivergent persons and institutional systems do not primarily arise from individual difficulties, but from a structural incompatibility between different forms of human existence and the normative architecture of modern societies. This incompatibility produces predictable forms of harm which, within legal and administrative procedures, are often individualized, pathologized, or interpreted as communicative disturbance. The volume unfolds this diagnosis in three interconnected steps. The first contribution introduces the concept of representational violence as an ontological critique of modern knowledge and administrative systems. It argues that, within many institutional contexts, reality is recognized only insofar as it can be translated into symbolic, administrative, or diagnostic formats. Forms of experience, perception, or existence that resist such translation do not merely remain unnoticed; they are structurally excluded from the sphere of what can appear as real. The second contribution develops, on this basis, the concept of a right to ontological coexistence. Neurodivergent forms of human existence are understood not as deviations from a general norm, but as autonomous variants of human world- and meaning-relation. Equality, therefore, cannot be conceived primarily as integration into a single social order. Instead, it must be understood as the legally protected coexistence of different forms of existence without coercion toward normalization, pathologization, or economic functionalization. The third contribution applies this perspective to the analysis of modern state institutions. Drawing on examples from social law, administrative procedures, and criminal-law attribution, it demonstrates how structural incompatibilities between neurodivergent forms of existence and work- and performance-centered systems generate foreseeable harms. Where existential dependency, known incompatibility, and predictable harm converge, state action can no longer be understood as neutral governance but must be recognized as a form of structural violence. Taken together, the volume develops a theoretical framework for analyzing modern societies under conditions of real ontological diversity. By connecting ontological critique, human rights reasoning, and legal system analysis, it aims to make visible forms of institutional violence that remain largely unrecognized in contemporary legal and social orders and to contribute to a reconsideration of equality, responsibility, and protective duties in plural societies.

This volume concludes Section V of the series by synthesizing the theoretical implications of the Emergence Economy developed in the preceding contributions. The section has shown that modern economies systematically misrecognize forms of work whose effects unfold over long temporal horizons, through relationships, or through the stabilization of complex social and epistemic fields. By introducing the concepts of the Value Threshold, Diversity Threshold, Unfolding Gap, and Eigenzeit, it outlines a framework for understanding the growing disjunction between real world-forming work and its economic recognition. From this perspective, poverty appears not merely as a lack of resources, but as a structural loss of world-binding capacity. The volume therefore situates the concept of Universal Care Income within a broader theoretical context: not primarily as a redistributive policy, but as an infrastructural condition that protects the possibility of world-forming work in complex societies.

This paper develops the theoretical foundations of Radical Worker (first published 2019, new edition 2025), arguing that self-determined work is not merely a political right but a structural requirement for preventing societies from collapsing into simulation. Autonomous labour is defined here as work that arises from internal resonance rather than external command, organised around long-term responsibility to reality rather than short-term deliverables. Building on the books Speeds Arbeit / Speed's Work and Radical Worker, the paper distinguishes three dimensions of labour: output-production, reality-maintenance, and simulation. It argues that only self-determined work can perform reality-maintaining labour in complex societies, because only autonomous workers have the structural freedom to correct institutions, preserve diversity, and generate new forms of meaning that are not pre-formatted by market or algorithmic expectations. By contrast, wage labour under contemporary capitalism is increasingly organised as simulation-management: the production and maintenance of appearances that satisfy metrics, dashboards and bureaucratic expectations without necessarily improving social or ecological reality. Automation and AI intensify this tendency by rewarding behaviours that imitate machine logic and punishing forms of work that cannot be simulated. Through a combination of theoretical analysis and long-term field research, the paper shows that self-determined workers are structurally targeted by labour markets, welfare bureaucracies and algorithmic governance precisely when their work increases reality-contact. The conclusion is that autonomous labour is not a luxury, hobby, or exception, but civilizational infrastructure. Societies that suppress self-determined work will progressively lose the capacity for correction, democratic reflexivity and ecological survival.

Research on autism and neurodivergence has produced a wide range of partial models over recent decades, including monotropism, hyper-systemizing, intense-world hypotheses, variants of predictive processing, theories of veridical mapping, and empirical descriptions of savant phenomena. Each of these approaches captures real aspects of neurodivergent cognition, yet they remain fragmented and fail to explain why these phenomena systematically co-occur. The present paper proposes an ontological re-framing. Building on the Rosetta Operator (10.5281/ZENODO.17857039), it argues that neurodivergent cognition should not primarily be understood as a variation of cognitive properties within an already stabilized world, but as a specific position within the process of world-stabilization itself. Veridical mapping is thus conceptualized not as a special ability, but as an epistemic access to pre-ontological structures that are early symbolically smoothed and integrated in neurotypical cognition. In this context, the Rosetta Operator does not function as an additional theory, but as a translational framework that allows existing models to be read as docking points of the same underlying dynamic: delayed or partial stabilization of world, increased openness to non-integrated structure, and a liminal observer position between pre-ontological openness and ontologically closed world. On this basis, monotropism, intense-world approaches, predictive-processing models, hyper-systemizing, veridical mapping, savant phenomena, and the double-empathy problem are integrated as different projections of a shared ontological process. The paper positions itself as a foundational contribution. It does not aim to introduce a new clinical typology, but to clarify the epistemic position of neurodivergent cognition and its significance for epistemology, scientific practice, and the understanding of different modes of world-access. 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.

Savant phenomena are still regarded in cognitive science and neurological research as anomalies: as isolated island abilities, as exceptions within otherwise deficit-oriented cognitive profiles, or as curiosities that cannot be adequately integrated into established models of intelligence, learning, or representation. Despite extensive empirical documentation, there is a lack of a theory that explains how savant performances are epistemically possible without either mystifying or pathologizing them. This paper proposes a fundamentally different approach. It argues that savant phenomena do not constitute special talents in the classical sense, but rather local manifestations of operatoric cognition: a non-representational mode of knowing in which structure is not modeled, simulated, or abstracted, but directly recognized and held as invariance (embodied). Savant performances are therefore based neither on increased computational capacity nor on exceptional memory or accelerated information processing, but on a specific operatoric coupling to world-structure that operates without symbolic mediation. On the basis of an operatoric model (Rosetta Operator DOI: 10.5281/ZENODO.17857039), which has been consistently developed over three decades across different fields of research—consciousness research, autism epistemology, value and labor ontology, and social analysis—it is shown that savant phenomena function as epistemic boundary cases. They make visible that knowledge does not necessarily have to be mediated through representation, generalization, or simulation, but can also arise from a non-closing relation to the ontological gap. From this perspective, savant performances do not appear as isolated islands within a deficit-oriented system, but as empirical evidence for a second knowledge architecture, whose systematic invisibility can be explained by processes of ontological smoothing—understood as a shift from pre-ontological structural relation toward representational distortion. The paper makes three contributions to savant research: (1) It provides a non-deficit-oriented ontological classification of savant phenomena at the operatoric level. (2) It explains the theoretical underdetermination of the field as a consequence of epistemic incompatibility between representational models and operatoric cognition. (3) It positions savant performances as empirical markers of non-representational cognition, with consequences for cognitive science, AI theory, and epistemology. 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.

The present volume brings together three contributions that pursue a shared theoretical question: what is work under conditions in which technical systems are increasingly able to simulate human performance, and what constitutes the specifically human form of work that structurally resists such simulation. The starting point is the observation that modern societies predominantly define work through output, employment status, or market value. This definition, however, enters into crisis once artificial intelligence becomes capable of formally reproducing ever larger portions of this output. Against this background, the contributions in this volume develop an ontological redefinition of work. Work is not understood primarily as the production of goods or services, but as a form of embodied, self-determined interaction with the world through which social and ecological reality is stabilized. Central to this perspective is the concept of relational agency: work appears as a practice in which action, responsibility, and world-reference are inseparably intertwined, enabling the emergence of new forms of meaning, knowledge, and social order. From this standpoint, artificial intelligence is not interpreted as a competitor to human labour in the conventional labour-market sense, but as a structural test case. AI makes visible which aspects of human activity are functionally reproducible and which are not. While many forms of output, decision-making, or innovation can be algorithmically simulated, the form of work that arises from situational responsibility, irreversible temporality, and concrete world-binding remains in principle non-delegable. In this context, particular attention is given to the concept of Eigenzeit, which designates the non-externalizable temporal dimension of human action in which decisions, responsibility, and consequences become irreversibly effective. The volume connects this ontological analysis with an examination of the social conflicts that arise from it. If work is not primarily output production but reality-maintenance and world-binding, those forms of labour that frequently remain invisible within contemporary labour regimes come into focus: artistic practice, care work, activism, critical research, and other forms of self-determined, relational activity. At the same time, these forms of work often encounter institutional resistance, delegitimization, or economic pressure, since they can only partially be integrated into market-based or algorithmically governed models of labour. The contributions therefore argue that the current transformation of work cannot be understood solely as an economic or technological issue. It concerns the more fundamental question of how societies organize their relationship to reality. If work is defined primarily through simulation, metrics, and interchangeable functions, there is a growing risk that social systems lose their capacity to recognize and correct real problems. In this sense, self-determined relational work appears not as a marginal phenomenon, but as a central condition for societal learning, democratic reflexivity, and the long-term stability of complex systems.

This volume forms the starting point of Section V – Work and Emergence Economy, which examines work not primarily as an economic category, but as a structural condition of world-formation. The contributions assembled here investigate the relation between the emergence of new realities and the conditions under which these realities become socially stabilised as value. In doing so, they shift the analytical focus from questions of distribution and productivity toward the deeper mechanisms that determine which forms of work are able to appear, persist, and shape the world. The present volume brings together five contributions that pursue a shared theoretical question: under what conditions do new forms of reality emerge, and under what conditions can these forms become stabilised as socially recognised value. The point of departure is the observation that modern societies, despite high levels of productivity, innovation, and complexity, increasingly confront phenomena of structural invisibility. Forms of work, knowledge, care, ecological regeneration, and social stabilisation exert real and system-sustaining effects, yet often fail to appear as economic value. To analyse this problem, the contributions develop a threshold model of social reality. At the centre of this model stand two interrelated concepts: the Diversity Threshold (D) as the threshold of forced emergence and the Value Threshold (T) as the threshold of societal stabilisation and visibility. While the Diversity Threshold designates the point at which systems must generate new forms due to increasing incommensurability, the Value Threshold describes the conditions under which these emergent forms can appear as durable and socially stabilised realities. The difference between these two thresholds leads to a structural diagnosis of contemporary societies. Many forms of real and effective work—such as care work, ecological regeneration, cultural practice, artistic research, or neurodivergent modes of problem-processing—frequently operate above the threshold of emergence, yet remain below the threshold of societal stabilisation. The result is a condition in which reality is continuously produced without becoming durably recognised as value. On this basis, the contributions develop an alternative perspective on economy and social value formation. Economy appears not primarily as a system of resource allocation, but as a threshold regime that determines which forms of emergent reality are stabilised and which remain invisible. The distinction between primary economy (world-sustaining work) and secondary economy (value-extractive organisation), together with the concept of the Unfolding Gap, describes concrete mechanisms through which this structural asymmetry manifests itself in everyday social life. The volume therefore does not present a programme of economic reform, but contributes to an ontologically grounded theory of work, value, and social reality. It proposes a research programme in which emergence, stabilisation, and visibility are not treated as separate phenomena, but as interrelated transitions within complex social systems.

The following paper is one of the most extensive documented analyses to date of state violence against neurodivergent people and the poor in Germany. It examines, with an unusual density of data, a series of social court and administrative law proceedings in which a neurodivergent applicant attempted to make fundamental rights – in particular access to autism diagnostics, disability-related accommodations, subsistence-securing benefits, and health protection – practically effective. What becomes visible is how the German state harms the health of neurodivergent people through unsuitable or failing administrative structures (Bürgergeld system / social courts / medical care), while protective mechanisms structurally fail. In the context of the WCA scandal in England, this study reveals a repetition of the same situation of endangerment that there led to numerous deaths and suicides. What emerges is a dramatic picture of the state’s inability to prevent foreseeable health damage and deaths among neurodivergent people that are caused by state action, which raises the most serious concern. Parallels to the Contergan/Thalidomide scandal also become apparent, particularly regarding the authorities’ treatment of the victims, but also with respect to the scale of health damage. This paper stands in the context of the ten-year investigation already published in the book Speed’s Work, which documents massive violence against the poor, neurodivergent people, and other marginalized groups – violence of which state authorities, public prosecutors, and ministers knew that it caused health damage, yet continued nevertheless. Judges, politicians, public prosecutors, and other employees of the state were and remain involved in this violence to this day. The starting point of this new investigation is the massive diagnostic emergency in the field of autism, which exists internationally and is enormous in Germany as well. In the course of this investigation, 1,667 affected individuals competed in one quarter, through a lottery procedure, for 25 diagnostic places at Humboldt University in Berlin, effectively making access to medically necessary autism diagnostics dependent on chance. Because the diagnosis is a prerequisite for almost all further social law claims, a systemic effect arises: without diagnosis no rights – without rights no stabilization – without stabilization no possibility of enforcing the diagnosis. Since only few studies to date have examined the consequences of this emergency in detail, this paper provides an important empirical basis beyond Germany. On the basis of eight court proceedings, several urgent proceedings before Social Courts and Higher Social Courts, internal administrative statements, reactions by court presidents, as well as the refusal of intervention by the Office of the General Public Prosecutor despite risk to life, the study examines how shifts of jurisdiction, fragmentation of legal domains, formal narrowing of claims, and delay condense into a de facto suspension of effective legal protection. The central thesis is that what appears here is not primarily an individual wrong decision, but a systemic constellation in which access to justice is formally opened while materially being structurally blocked. The data reveal a simulation of legality in which state action loses any connection to social reality and individuals are sacrificed in order to stabilize the system. Fundamental structural flaws become visible in social law, as well as in the criminal liability of institutions and their accountability (corporate crime and organizational liability / corporate manslaughter and corporate homicide). It becomes clearly visible how the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is disregarded at crucial points in Germany, or simply cannot be enforced. The data of the long-term investigation show that a General Public Prosecutor in Germany can watch, without consequence, as an autistic person is gradually forced into mortal danger through the withdrawal of fundamental rights by authorities. As the practical test carried out here reveals, no real functioning protection exists against indirect killing through state measures. Germany also collects no data at all on deaths caused by the state, meaning that what occurred in England (600 suicides) remains statistically invisible in Germany. The question of what state violence against the poor and people with disabilities actually means for those affected has so far been insufficiently investigated. Why autistic people internationally have an estimated life expectancy reduced by up to 16 years can partly be better understood on the basis of the data presented in this study. This study places the frequently occurring, foreseeable health damage among neurodivergent people into the space of the highest urgency, as well as the failure of authorities to react to threats to health and even threats to life, and it likely provides for the first time a scientific basis for assessing the enforceability of the fundamental rights of neurodivergent people in a European country such as Germany. Methodologically, the work (qualitative research) combines legal analysis with documented lived impact. The author acts not only as an external observer but also as part of the experimental arrangement (“provoked empiricism”): applications, complaints, and danger notifications function as empirical measuring instruments in order to make visible how institutions react under conditions of known vulnerability. The emotional dimension – in particular the medically described risk posed by continuous administrative stress in autism – is treated not as rhetorical exaggeration but as part of the evidentiary basis. In the light of international human rights concepts, the events are classified as forms of Structural Violence, Procedural Violence, Epistemic Violence, and Safeguarding Failure. Particular attention is given to the question of whether and why foreseeable health damage is knowingly accepted despite awareness of the situation. This work serves as a human-rights basis aimed at preventing further suffering as far as possible, and as a submission for examination by the responsible EU and UN institutions in Brussels and Geneva, as well as by the German Federal Constitutional Court. This paper has also been submitted to the General Public Prosecutor of Brandenburg together with a criminal complaint, as well as to the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs in Berlin. Through this documentation, testimony is intended to be given to the fatal situation of neurodivergent people. At the same time, the present investigation functions within the author’s overall body of work as a methodological bridge between theoretical work, documentation, and institutional experience. It reconstructs not only concrete legal conflicts but also makes visible how structural blockages themselves become an epistemic environment that shapes the form, tone, and persistence of neurodivergent research. In this way, the paper contributes to clarifying the conditions under which self-determined neurodivergent knowledge production emerges and shows why its forms of expression are often misunderstood or delegitimized when this contextual structure is not taken into account.

The present volume brings together three contributions that address a fundamental question of neurodivergent existence: under which ontological conditions do the conflicts arise between neurodivergent forms of life and the institutional, diagnostic, and temporal structures of modern societies? The point of departure is the observation that central phenomena in autism and neurodivergence research—such as masking, autistic burnout, or the frequent biographical breakdowns occurring under administrative and labour-market conditions—are predominantly interpreted as problems of individual adaptation. The contributions collected in this volume systematically challenge this perspective. Instead, they develop an ontological analysis in which the conflicts between neurodivergent and neurotypical forms of existence are understood as expressions of different structures of world-relation and world-binding. The first contribution develops a theory of masking that understands it not primarily as a psychological strategy of adaptation, but as an ontological boundary process. Masking emerges where neurodivergent modes of world-relation—characterised by open, relational, and not fully objectified experiential fields—must enter social orders organised through simplification, representation, and stable role structures. In this context, masking appears both as a creative form of world mediation and as a potentially exhausting performance when such mediation becomes the permanent condition of social existence. The second contribution analyses the diagnostic consequences of this constellation. It shows that psychiatric and clinical models frequently interpret masking as a symptom of over-adaptation or exhaustion and thereby produce a structural misreading. Autistic competence, stability, or situational adaptability are often diagnostically interpreted as deception or compensation, whereas autism becomes recognisable as “authentic” only in moments of overload, breakdown, or burnout. In this way, an iatrogenic dynamic emerges in which diagnostic recognition is effectively bound to visible failure. The third contribution extends this analysis through a temporal and institutional perspective. With the concept of Eigenzeit, it shows that many conflicts in neurodivergent biographies arise not primarily from individual deficits, but from a structural incompatibility between forms of intensive world-binding and the time-administrative regimes of modern institutions. Procedures, deadlines, and organisational routines replace real world-binding with simulations of responsibility, thereby creating conditions under which highly bound forms of existence struggle to sustain stable life trajectories. Taken together, the contributions develop a perspective in which neurodivergent existence does not appear as a deviation from a normative model of human subjectivity, but as an epistemic and ontological boundary case of modern societies. The conflicts analysed in this volume reveal that many institutional, diagnostic, and temporal orders rely on simplifications that systematically overstrain or render invisible more complex modes of world-relation. Neurodivergence thus emerges not only as an object of clinical description, but as an analytical entry point into fundamental questions concerning reality, responsibility, and the conditions of viable social orders.

This volume brings together four contributions that address a shared question: under which ontological and epistemic conditions do different forms of human world-constitution arise, and what role does neurodivergent cognition play within this process. The point of departure is the observation that contemporary autism research largely operates under an implicit assumption: that all humans inhabit the same ontological ground and that differences appear primarily at the level of cognitive traits, information processing, or social abilities. The contributions collected here systematically question this assumption. They develop the thesis that autistic and neurotypical modes of world-constitution are grounded in different operator logics. From this perspective, autistic cognition does not appear as a variation within a shared ontology but as a distinct epistemic position characterized by increased access to non-integrated structural relations of reality. On this basis, several theoretical steps are developed. First, the concept of autistic ontology shows that differences between autistic and neurotypical subjects are not primarily communicative or cognitive deviations but arise from divergent modes of world-stabilization. Second, the Rosetta Operator formulates an invariant operator system describing processes of difference, tension, indimergence, and emergence as fundamental structures of reality formation. This framework connects multiple domains—including consciousness research, economic theory, and neurodivergence—within a common structural model. Third, the concept of operatoric cognition introduces a non-representational form of intelligent world-relation that operates not primarily through symbols or meanings but through dynamic transitions, topological tensions, and emergent processes of form generation. Finally, the concept of veridical mapping is interpreted as an epistemic consequence of this architecture: an access to pre-symbolic structural relations that remains more directly available in certain neurodivergent cognitive configurations than in neurotypical forms of perception stabilized early through symbolic integration. The volume thus proposes a shift in the theoretical framing of neurodivergent cognition. Instead of describing autism through deficit-oriented accounts of individual traits, it interprets autistic cognition as an epistemic boundary position within the open process of world-stabilization. In this perspective, autism becomes relevant not only for cognitive science but also for epistemology and the philosophy of science, as it reveals alternative modes of world-access that challenge representational models of knowledge. The concepts developed in this volume are not presented as a final theory but as a structural framework intended to integrate previously fragmented models of autism research while opening a broader perspective on the conditions of knowledge, perception, and reality formation.

The present volume brings together three contributions that pursue a shared ontological question: under what conditions can world arise at all, and where do the structural limits of technical systems and theoretical models lie in relation to this capacity for world-formation. The point of departure is the observation that many contemporary debates in physics, artificial intelligence, and information theory implicitly assume that increasing complexity, computational power, or theoretical precision could in principle suffice to reconstruct, simulate, or fully explain world. The contributions collected in this volume systematically challenge this assumption. They argue that world does not arise from completeness or formal closure, but presupposes a structural openness that cannot be fully stabilized without undermining the very condition that makes world possible. The first contribution introduces the All–Nothing Paradox (ANP) as a minimal ontological condition of world-formation. According to this view, world appears only where reality does not fully coincide with itself and cannot collapse either into complete determinacy or into pure nothingness. Ontological openness is therefore not an epistemic incompleteness, but a structural prerequisite for perspective, emergence, and reality. The second contribution examines the implications of this condition for artificial systems. It argues that technical systems necessarily operate within formally closed spaces of possibility and can therefore simulate world states but cannot form world. World-formation presupposes structural vulnerability, non-optimisability, and the real risk of world loss—properties that stand in structural contradiction to the technical usability of artificial systems. The third contribution extends this consideration to scientific theory itself. It introduces a categorical distinction between theoretical correctness and world-founding capacity and shows that even fully correct, empirically successful, and formally consistent theories are not thereby ontologically world-capable. Scientific models operate within stabilized spaces of possibility and therefore presuppose the existence of a world without being able to generate it. Taken together, the contributions mark a precise ontological boundary: world cannot arise either from complete theoretical determinacy or from technical simulation. It emerges only under conditions of structural openness that cannot be fully formalized or stabilized. The volume therefore does not present a critique of scientific or technological practice, but a clarification of its ontological scope.

The present volume brings together six contributions that pursue a common question: under what conditions stable forms arise in natural, biological, social, and cognitive systems, and where the ontological limits of their reconstruction, control, or simulation lie. The point of departure is the observation that central contemporary debates—such as those in morphogenesis, complexity research, medicine, or artificial intelligence—are increasingly structured by concepts that treat form as in principle reconstructible: as a target state, attractor, setpoint, or as information within a state space. The volume systematically questions this implicit assumption. The contributions develop a morphological perspective in which form is not understood as a stored structure or a retrievable goal, but as a temporary stabilization within irreversible dynamic processes. Earlier theoretical concepts such as focal points (Fixpunkte), folding, and the Bran-Spiral are genealogically reconstructed and related to later operatorial concepts such as shift of being (Seinsverschiebung), negative topology, and indimergent stabilization. From this perspective, form appears neither as the product of a plan nor as the result of linear processes, but as an emergent configuration that can stabilize only under specific historical and temporal conditions. Against this background, central phenomena of biological morphogenesis are reread. Bioelectric regulation, regeneration, aging, cancer, or cloning no longer appear primarily as problems of genetic control or technical manipulation, but as boundary cases of emergent order. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of the Eigenzeit of living systems: the irreversible emergence-time in which form becomes genealogically stabilized. Interventions that attempt to bypass or neutralize this Eigenzeit therefore do not necessarily produce a return to earlier states, but rather temporarily stable yet ontologically displaced orders. At the same time, the contributions show that many contemporary hopes for technical reconstruction—such as those found in regenerative medicine, bioengineering, or AI-based simulations—rest on a categorical confusion. Simulation operates within given state spaces and can reproduce formal stabilizations without participating in the ontological conditions of world-formation. Morphology, simulation, and repair must therefore be understood as three fundamentally different modes. In the final step, this perspective is extended to a more general ontological level. If time itself is understood as the trace of irreversible loss of possibility, every stabilized world-form proves to be structurally finite. Indimergence appears here as a double boundary operation: it grounds world-time while simultaneously carrying the condition of its exhaustion. The volume therefore does not present itself as a complete theory of morphology, but as a precise boundary determination with respect to ontologies that assume the complete availability of form, information, and world.

The contributions assembled in this volume examine a fundamental question that is usually only implicitly presupposed in the natural sciences: under what conditions can world arise and persist at all. The point of departure is the observation that modern physical theories have achieved an extraordinary degree of formal precision, yet at the same time often presuppose what they cannot themselves explain—namely, the stabilization of world as a historically effective nexus. The volume therefore introduces a categorical distinction between theoretical correctness and world-founding capacity (World-Capability). Theories can be internally consistent, empirically confirmed, and technically successful without thereby explaining the conditions under which world can appear at all and unfold effects. This difference forms the starting point of the following analyses. On this basis, the question of the direction of time is reformulated. Time does not appear primarily as a parameter of physical processes, but as a trace of irreversible world-binding. World emerges through processes in which possibility is transferred into concrete existence and thereby irreversibly bound. The direction of time is an expression of this binding. Several contributions show how this perspective renders central physical concepts newly readable. Relativistic time differences no longer appear as mere numerical deviations, but as irreversible shifts in the conditions under which world has taken place. World-processes can therefore be conceived neither as linear nor as fully reversible; they follow a curved structure in which recurrence always occurs under altered conditions. Against this background, the limits of formal reconstruction become visible. Simulations, information models, and artificial intelligence operate within reconstructible state spaces and therefore cannot produce world-binding, but only process its traces. Even fundamental physical limits—such as the speed of light—no longer appear solely as dynamical constraints, but as structural conditions of world-connectedness itself. The volume does not present itself as a competitor to physical theories, but as an ontological clarification of their presuppositions. It does not ask how world functions within existing models, but under what conditions it can appear as world at all.

The present volume brings together four contributions that pursue a common ontological question: under what conditions can determinate reality arise from an open dynamics of possibilities, and when does this transition take the form of observation or experience. The point of departure is the diagnosis that central problems of modern physics and consciousness research—most notably the measurement problem of quantum mechanics and the so-called “hard problem” of consciousness—rest on a categorial confusion. Transitions between openness and facticity are typically interpreted as processes that must be mediated within a shared temporal framework. The contributions collected here argue, by contrast, that this expectation itself forms part of the difficulty. Where implicative boundary acts are involved, the question of a mediating “how” loses its validity. From this perspective, the measurement problem is reread. Measurement no longer appears primarily as an epistemic act performed by an observer, but as an ontological stabilization of determinacy under conditions of structural overload within open dynamics. Observation, in this sense, is not a special property of particular systems, but a space-internal operation through which world stabilizes events and perspectives. Against this background, the volume develops the concept of ontological recurrence within the MNO model (Submergence–Indimergence–Emergence), originally introduced in The Physics of the Poor. Recurrence designates a cyclical return of a system to the space of its own possibilities prior to the stabilization of an actual state. The central proposal is that the transition from possibility to actuality can occur in two structurally distinct forms: as ordinary measurement without recurrence, or as phenomenal actualization under conditions of recurrence. This distinction makes it possible to treat the measurement problem of quantum mechanics and the emergence of conscious experience within a shared structural framework. At the same time, it suggests a minimal dynamical condition under which physical collapse events—such as those discussed in Orch-OR models—can acquire phenomenal quality. The volume therefore does not present itself as a new interpretation of quantum mechanics in the narrow sense. Its aim is rather a categorial clarification of the conditions under which concepts such as measurement, observer, experience, and time can be meaningfully formulated and related to one another.