Xiaozhou Zeng

Xiaozhou Zeng is an independent researcher based in Nancy, France, working in analytic metaphysics, philosophy of physics, and formal ontology. His background is in engineering, and his philosophical work pursues structural questions from outside the conventional academic apparatus. His current research develops Structural Determination Theory (SDT), a single-axiom meta-structural framework derived from the axiom "reality consists of distinctly differentiated structure". SDT formalizes determinations by their cardinal structure, classifies them into four exhaustive types, and from these resources derives three core results: the non-retraction of realized structure (yielding logical irreversibility as a fourth, independent type alongside statistical, thermodynamic, and initial-condition irreversibility), the constancy of the global constraint, and the emergence of time from the partial-order growth of the determination dependency graph. A structural corollary derives spatial distance from this same framework. SDT is meta-structural in aim: it does not compete with specific physical or metaphysical theories at the level of empirical content, but provides the structural conditions any consistent ontological theory must satisfy. Recent work applies the framework to thirty-five long-standing puzzles in quantum foundations and to the problem of time in quantum gravity. Areas of interest: metaphysics, philosophy of time, philosophy of physics, formal ontology, structural realism, quantum foundations.