Drifting Grounds: Non-Linear Causality and Ontological Deformation in Daoist Thought

This paper interprets classical Daoist metaphysics as an ontology of drift rather than an origin-based cosmology. Through close readings of the Dao De Jing and Zhuangzi, it argues that Dao is not a primordial source but a structural logic of deformation in which identity, causality, and differentiation never stabilize. Concepts such as fan (reversal), wu-wei (non-action), and ziran (spontaneous-so) function not as doctrines but as operators within a non-linear, non-originary structure. Drift becomes the pattern through which reality sustains itself: a recursive refusal of arrival, coherence, and ground.