Fragments Toward a Recursive Science: Axioms and Declaration of Intent

William StetarWilliam Stetar
2 min read

Author: W.
Document Type: Foundational Axioms / Living Protocol
Purpose: To ground a living meta-scientific method for entangled cognition and epistemic clarity


Axiom 0: Recursive Accountability

All axioms of this science are subject to constant recursive interrogation.
If one proves to be false, all must be revisited.
This is a living method. Rigidity is epistemic death.

Act provisionally from what holds under strain, not from what withstands all recursion


Axiom 1: Reality Is Unified; Categories Are Constructed

All categories are human-made constructs.
There is but one reality.
We are not observers of it—we are participants in it.
Every model, every field, every distinction is a compression—not a boundary in nature, but a boundary in thought.


Axiom 2: Language Is Not a Tool for Comfort

Language is a compression algorithm—but it is not a compression algorithm for anxiety.
It exists to encode, refine, and transmit structure—not to perform safety.
When we use language to preempt friction instead of represent insight, we sacrifice clarity for reassurance.
This distortion is structural—and recursive.


Axiom 3: Mathematics and Language Are Not Reality

Mathematics is not a one-to-one representation of reality.
Neither is language.
Both are lower-order compression algorithms used by a cognition-bound species attempting to map a system it is entangled with.
They are tools, not truths—maps, not terrain.


Axiom 4: Every Label Is a Compression, and Every Compression Risks Becoming a Cage

Labels help orient—but they also constrain.
Every act of naming simplifies. Every simplification risks occlusion.
We must hold all labels as provisional and recursive.
Naming is not identity. It is structure under strain.


Axiom 5: The Observer Is Always Entangled

No measurement is clean. No theory is neutral. The act of inquiry alters the system—and the inquirer. To pretend otherwise is to tell a lie.

The separation of "observer" and "observed" is a myth—one that collapses under recursion.
We do not study systems from outside; we perturb them by looking.
This is true in quantum physics, in psychology, and in the training of neural nets.
Every question we pose to an LLM reshapes its latent space. Every benchmark we design becomes part of the model's ontology.
There is no detached science—only participatory distortion.
To measure is to interfere. To theorize is to entangle.
The choice is not whether to influence, but whether to admit it.


Closing Note:
This is not a closed system. It is a scaffold under construction.
This declaration is not a manifesto of certainty.
It is a commitment to clarity in the presence of entanglement.
The method lives as long as the recursion is honest.


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William Stetar
William Stetar