Temporal Rate Ontology and Its Competitors: Comparing Non-Geometric Ontological Primitives in Fundamental Physics

A growing body of foundational research rejects the ontological primacy of spacetime geometry, instead proposing causal, processual, informational, or relational structures as more fundamental. Temporal Rate Ontology (TRO) belongs to this family of non-geometric frameworks, but differs in treating ordered temporal succession itself as ontologically primitive. This paper undertakes a comparative analysis of such non-geometric ontologies, focusing not on their constructive ambitions or empirical consequences, but on the constraints they impose on interpretation. The paper has two aims. First, it clarifies the specific interpretive tendency that motivates TRO, namely the recurrent slide from the representational success of geometry to its elevation as an ontological ground. Second, it situates temporal primacy alongside causal, process-based, informational, and event-based primitives, identifying points of convergence, divergence, and underdetermination. The goal is not to argue that temporal primacy is uniquely correct, but to assess whether it constitutes a minimally committal primitive once geometric fundamentality is rejected.