From Quantum Transitions to Spacetime: The Emergence of Time and Space in Layered Reality Theory

Layered Reality Theory (LRT) proposes that physical reality is ontologically stratified into three distinct layers – a base layer of generative constraint, a quantum layer of structured possibility, and a macro layer of realised actuality – related by a cross-layer admissibility principle, coherence-by-fit (CBF). This paper develops the temporal and spatiotemporal commitments of that framework. It argues that time is not a pre-existing dimension within which physical events occur but the accumulated record of quantum to-macro transitions, and that temporal asymmetry is a structural consequence of CBF's forward-only direction rather than a feature of initial conditions or dynamical laws. It further argues that spacetime is constituted by CBF-governed coherence constraint relationships between macro-layer actualisations rather than being a container within which those actualisations occur, and that c is not a dynamical speed limit imposed on entities moving through a pre-existing spacetime but the maximal rate at which base-layer coherence relationships can be coherently incorporated into the macro-layer record. The paper additionally develops an account of massless entities, photons and gluons, as base-layer coherence agents whose function explains the universal pervasiveness of the electromagnetic field and the infinite range of the electromagnetic force. A preliminary account of gravity as macro-layer relational embeddedness is developed, locating gravity's ontological home within LRT's architecture and explaining several of its characteristic features as consequences of that characterisation. All four central claims follow from LRT's core architectural commitments without requiring additional posits, suggesting that the framework may be tracking genuine ontological structure across a wide range of fundamental physical phenomena.