Ffellonics: A Geometric and Thermodynamic Visualisation of Fragmenting Reality

In their 2022 book Fragmenting Reality: An Essay on Passage, Causality and Time Travel, Samuele Iaquinto and Giuliano Torrengo defend Flow Fragmentalism — a sophisticated form of fragmentalism that treats reality as inherently fragmented into multiple, internally coherent but mutually incompatible "fragments." Passage of time is real and robust, not illusory. Different fragments disagree about what is present, past, or future, yet all fragments have equal metaphysical status. The flow of time emerges from the dynamic links between these fragments, allowing a genuine "push from the past and pull from the future" while addressing challenges from causation, special relativity, and time travel.

Ffellonics offers an intuitive geometric and thermodynamic visualisation of this fragmented, dynamic conception of reality. The connection is an analogy — Ffellonics is a model of physical self-assembly, not a metaphysical theory — but it is a structurally illuminating one, and it is worth mapping carefully, including where it diverges.

The Fragmented yet Ordered Emergence in Ffellonics

Ffellonics is a 12-Level relational emergence hierarchy generated by identical spheres attaching symmetrically to maximise contacts while minimising free energy. It begins with the first relational contact (Level 1) and progresses cumulatively through Platonic milestones — tetrahedron at Level 3, octahedron at Level 4, icosahedron at Level 5 — to the stable 12-fold coordination lattice (FCC/HCP) at Level 12.

At each Level, the configuration is the lowest-free-energy, symmetry-maximising state achievable from the previous one. From the perspective of any single Level, the full hierarchy appears "fragmented" in a sense worth examining:

• Each Level constitutes its own internally coherent relational structure, with its own coordination geometry and symmetry.

• That structure is geometrically incompatible with the global symmetry and coordination of later Levels — you cannot simultaneously be at Level 3 and Level 7.

• The irreversible thermodynamic progression from one Level to the next creates a clear directionality — the lower configuration is subsumed into the higher one.

This structural picture resonates with Flow Fragmentalism, but an important disanalogy must be acknowledged at the outset. In Iaquinto and Torrengo's account, all fragments — past, present, and future — have equal metaphysical status. The past fragment is not absorbed or superseded; it persists as a fully real fragment that simply disagrees with others about what counts as present. In Ffellonics, earlier Levels are not preserved in this way: Level 3 is structurally incorporated into and subsumed by Level 12. The relationship is closer to developmental stages — caterpillar to butterfly — than to co-existing, co-equal Fragmentalist fragments.

The visualisation is therefore partial: Ffellonics captures the directed, irreversible succession of Fragmentalist passage, but not the co-equal persistence of past fragments. Bearing this in mind, the structural analogy remains illuminating.

It is also worth noting that the incompatibility between Ffellonic Levels is geometric and sequential — they cannot coexist as physical configurations — while the incompatibility between Fragmentalist fragments is logical: they cannot be jointly true. These are distinct kinds of incompatibility. The geometric version is a visual analogue of the logical one, not an instance of it.

Thermodynamics as the Engine of Fragmented Passage

In Ffellonics, the driver of passage is the inseparable unity of local free-energy minimisation and entropy production. Each attachment lowers free energy locally while exporting entropy, making the progression dissipative, self-reinforcing, and effectively irreversible.

This provides a concrete visualisation of how robust passage can arise in a fragmented reality:

• The "push from the past" maps cleanly onto the cumulative grounding of each new Level in the attachments of all previous Levels. No Level can be reached without the full relational history that precedes it.

• The "pull from the future" requires more care. Thermodynamics is not teleological: the system has no foresight of Level 12 and is not drawn toward it from ahead. What can honestly be said is that the shape of the energy landscape is such that the local rule — at every step, always — consistently selects the direction of Level 12. The global attractor is encoded in the local rule, not in any anticipation of the endpoint. This is structurally analogous to a "pull" without being literally one, and the distinction matters.

• Causality emerges naturally as the ordered succession of attachments: each Level causally grounds the next through the single local rule, without requiring a globally coherent timeline imposed from outside.

Philosophical Resonance

Ffellonics resonates with the Whiteheadian undertones present in many dynamic theories of time, and which can be read into the process-oriented spirit of Iaquinto and Torrengo's account. Each attachment can be seen as an "actual occasion" of prehension and concrescence — a relational act that contributes to the emergence of higher unities while leaving earlier configurations as completed but structurally subsumed moments.

Where Flow Fragmentalism uses logical and metaphysical fragmentation to preserve objective passage, Ffellonics renders a cognate idea in pure geometry and thermodynamics: reality advances through successive relational configurations, each internally coherent, each giving way irreversibly to the next, with the intrinsic thermodynamic drive ensuring direction without requiring a global timekeeper.

Conclusion

Ffellonics does not replace the sophisticated logical apparatus of Fragmenting Reality. It cannot: it is a physical model, not a metaphysical theory, and the disanalogies — co-equal metaphysical status of fragments, logical versus geometric incompatibility, the non-teleological character of thermodynamic "pull" — are real and should not be minimised.

What it does offer is a vivid, intuitive geometric and thermodynamic picture of the core Fragmentalist insight: that directed, irreversible passage can arise from the successive grounding of internally coherent but mutually incompatible configurations, without requiring a single globally coherent block of reality. In Ffellonics, the 12-Level hierarchy visualises how a simple local rule generates cumulative, directed becoming — finite in hierarchical depth, infinite in harmonious extension.

For readers finding Flow Fragmentalism abstract or counter-intuitive, the Ffellonic picture offers a way in: not as a proof of the metaphysical view, but as a concrete model of how fragmented, directed emergence can be both thermodynamically grounded and geometrically elegant. The fragmentation of reality, in this picture, need not lead to disorder — it can, level by level, culminate in stable, maximal relational harmony.