Zairu Tian

Traditional physics excels at precisely describing what matter “is”——measuring its mass, charge, density, and summarizing its behavioral laws with mathematical equations. However, this “ID photo” paradigm has consistently evaded a fundamental question: why has matter grown to be what it is today? This paper proposes that every piece of matter is an evolutionary history of organization spanning billions of years——where it was born, what it experienced, and with whom it had what kinds of relationships. These experiences are not philosophical speculations, but are solidified as organizational memory into electronic configurations, lattice structures, and chemical properties, determining how it interacts today with external relations such as light, magnetism, and force. By systematically reviewing cutting-edge interdisciplinary research findings on material memory effects, large-scale structure of the cosmic web, nucleosynthesis of elements, phylogenetic conservatism of plant elementomes, and isotope tracing, this paper demonstrates the empirical foundation and theoretical feasibility of constructing an “Organizational Relational Atlas of the Universe,” and proposes a three-dimensional theoretical framework including element genealogy, relationship chain tracing, and cross-level relational atlas. Furthermore, based on existing open scientific data——including the NuGrid stellar nucleosynthesis database, COSMOS survey network analysis data, and the StoichLife ecological stoichiometry database——this paper constructs a preliminary conceptual model of this atlas. Research shows that cutting-edge discoveries in multiple scientific fields are converging toward the same direction: the current state of matter cannot be reduced to its static properties, but is the dynamic manifestation of its entire organizational evolutionary history in the current context. Constructing an Organizational Relational Atlas of the Universe is expected to provide a unified “relationship-tracing” analytical paradigm for materials science, cosmology, life sciences, and other fields.

The current debate on AI consciousness is dominated by computational functionalism, whose core presupposition—that consciousness is independent of physical substrate—has lacked rigorous ontological scrutiny. This paper introduces Organizational Ontology as an analytical perspective, reconceptualizing consciousness as the hierarchical emergence of survival demand signals emitted by organizational units within multi-layered networks. From this perspective, the paper systematically reveals seven organizational gaps in the conditions for consciousness generation in large language models, and demonstrates that consciousness is an exclusive emergent property of the life level that cannot be replicated through the programmatic information recombination of the digital level. On this basis, the paper identifies three necessary organizational conditions for the emergence of consciousness—autopoietic organization, active homeostatic maintenance, and endogenous demand-driven processing—providing new theoretical criteria distinct from computational functionalism for the research and evaluation of artificial consciousness.

Organizational ontology understands existence as the continuous maintenance of dynamic organizational patterns, thereby dividing the universe into multiple organizational levels that are irreducible to one another. However, are the boundaries between these levels flexible transition zones or rigid ontological barriers? This paper proposes the “Cross-Domain Inviolability Principle” to answer this question, arguing that every mature cosmic level possesses an uncrossable ontological boundary. The symbolic systems of the social level cannot modify the metabolic rules of the biological level; the informational regulation of the biological level cannot abolish the conservation laws of the physical level; levels may exchange resources and information through their respective interfaces, but core organizational parameters cannot be directly rewritten. On this basis, this paper further inquires into the essence of longevity: since organizational patterns are abstract and could theoretically operate indefinitely, why do all organizations inevitably age and die? This paper proposes that the marginal increase of the maintenance cost function—namely, that each repair leaves behind irreversible structural residuals, causing maintenance costs to increase monotonically over time—is the ultimate constraint on longevity, and clarifies the universality of this cost function even in newly created organizational patterns. Finally, the Cross-Domain Inviolability Principle is justified within the grand framework of “Dao-field and Dao-gate”: the organizational universe consists of countless Dao-fields, which are divided into crossable and uncrossable types; the uncrossable Dao-fields are precisely the organizational levels themselves. Once a level possesses its own exclusive Dao-base, exclusive organizational force, and irreducible emergent properties, its core organizational parameters can no longer be directly modified by other levels. The revelation of this principle provides the ultimate ontological justification for the hierarchical theory of organizational ontology.

The longterm persistence of any organizational pattern faces a fundamental challenge: the inevitable accumulation of replication errors leads to the continuous degradation of organizational memory across generations. Grounded in the core insight of organizational ontology—that any “existence” is a dynamically maintained organizational pattern rather than a static independent entity—this paper establishes linear replication and networked verification as the two fundamental strategies for organizational memory preservation. It reveals a previously underappreciated crosslevel regularity: from the mass production of hydrogen atoms to nucleosynthesis inside stars, from gene replication to code iteration, from linguistic transmission to legal evolution, the organizational universe has invented only these two basic replication grammars. Linear replication hedges against errors through sheer quantity—effortless and efficient, but in the long run it falls into an irreversible decline known as Muller’s ratchet. Networked verification blocks error accumulation through crosscomparison of independent copies—it requires sustained verification costs but in exchange provides long‑term stability of organizational memory. Taking the “two‑fold cost of sex” paradox as a starting point, this paper integrates theoretical and empirical results from population genetics, nucleosynthesis theory, condensed matter physics, software engineering, cognitive science, and social network analysis. It systematically demonstrates how the mass production of hydrogen atoms and the nuclide verification by supernovae constitute classic cosmic‑scale cases of organizational memory preservation, how Git version control in the digital world independently replicates the full logic of networked verification in engineering form, and how the distinction between civil law and common law reflects the differential weighting of the two strategies at the social level. The study further reveals that verification mechanisms run through all levels of organizational memory systems—from hydrogen to uranium in the periodic table, from genetic blueprints to code repositories, from oral epics to legal institutions. And the sole judge throughout is the efficiency principle: to secure the longest persistence at the smallest cost.

“Dao gives birth to one, one gives birth to two, two gives birth to three, and three gives birth to all things” is the classical expression of cosmic generation in Laozi’s philosophy, yet its core issues—such as “how nothing gives birth to being,” “what one is,” and “how three gives birth to all things”—remain unresolved to this day. Based on organizational ontology, this paper proposes an entirely new interpretive framework: “Dao” is not an external source that creates all things, but an undifferentiated primordial organizational field; “nothing” is the latent state in which organizational patterns are not yet excited; “Dao gives birth to one” is the establishment, through efficiency selection within this field, of the first replicable organizational pattern—the Dao-bit. This paper reinterprets Laozi’s generative sequence as a process of differentiation and emergence of organizational levels: “one gives birth to two” corresponds to the unlimited replication and diffusion of the Dao-bit; “two gives birth to three” corresponds to the unstable excitation triggered by local asymmetry; “three gives birth to all things” corresponds to the recursive nesting and hierarchical emergence of organizational patterns. On this basis, the paper constructs a four-stage model of cosmic evolution—“Dao-bit—phase—emergence—return”—and illustrates it by reference to typical organizational levels such as the atomic-molecular, celestial, and digital worlds, endeavoring to provide a unified dialogical framework for quantum cosmology, hierarchical emergence theory, and Eastern cosmology. The study indicates that what Laozi’s “Dao gives birth to all things” describes is essentially not a linear creation process, but the eternal configuration and dissolution of the universe’s organizational patterns from the latent to the manifest, from the simple to the complex—to exist is to organize, and to organize is to eternally return.

Grounded in a processual organizational ontology, this paper proposes and elaborates the category of "organizational memory." Any organizational pattern that maintains dynamic stability necessarily leaves historical structural or informational traces upon its constituent units; these distributed yet interconnected traces constitute organizational memory. Stored across multi-level units and continuously reshaped through transmission and recombination, such memory persistently molds new forms and constrains evolution, thereby forming the foundation for the continuity of consciousness and the intergenerational transmission of culture. This paper constructs a multi-level analytical framework, examines empirical manifestations across physical, biological, social, and virtual strata, and advances a "dispersion-storage-recombination" mechanism model. This model provides a coherent explanation for phenomena such as path dependence, instinctive fear, and the emergence of consciousness. The study demonstrates that introducing the dimension of memory propels organizational ontology from a focus on synchronic structure toward diachronic process, offering a unified and novel perspective for understanding existential continuity, the nature of consciousness, and the historicity of cosmic evolution.

Contemporary ontology is largely built on the framework of substantialism, which treats entities as independent, self‑existing basic units. This perspective encounters fundamental difficulties in explaining complex systems such as quantum entanglement, life, and consciousness. This study employs philosophical analysis and interdisciplinary synthesis to re‑examine the criteria for “existence,” aiming to overcome the limitations of substantialism and construct a new ontological paradigm centered on “organization.” The research posits that any stable existent is essentially a dynamic organizational pattern with a specific structure and function. The fundamental criterion of its existence lies in “how it constitutes and maintains itself” rather than “what material it is made of.” Although due to space constraints, this study has not yet conducted detailed empirical tests and theoretical applications for specific disciplines, and the depth of interdisciplinary integration remains to be enhanced, its preliminary conclusions suggest that organizational ontology holds the potential to provide a coherent ontological foundation for various sciences. It endeavors to shift the philosophical landscape from a static “collection of entities” to a dynamic “organizational process,” thereby opening new theoretical horizons for understanding the complexity, interconnectedness, and evolution of the world. (This preprint is submitted for open discussion and may be revised in subsequent versions.)