From Process to Duration: Periodicity and the Grounding of Metric Time

Abstract

This paper defends Periodic Process Realism: the view that metric time is physically grounded in stable recurring processes rather than in an independent temporal container. The thesis is realist — periodicities exist independently of observers — but anti-substantival: no further temporal medium is required beyond the processes that furnish temporal metric. The argument distinguishes temporal order, temporal metric, temporal direction, and lived temporality, claiming that recurrence specifically grounds the second of these. Three lines of support are developed: precision time standards are realized through recurrent processes; the universal acceleration razor renders absolute background time empirically idle; and relational approaches to quantum dynamics show that periodic clocks form a formally nontrivial class of temporal reference systems. The thesis is closest to Aristotle, Mach, and contemporary process philosophy, but differs by privileging recurrence over change in general as the basis of countable duration. Objections from non-periodic duration, thermodynamic irreversibility, Shoemaker-style time without change, Bergsonian durée, and the first-completed-cycle problem are addressed. The result is a layered account on which process supplies order, periodicity supplies metric, entropy supplies arrow, and consciousness supplies experience.

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