kept difference

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

A kept difference is a stabilized constraint that continues to shape what can happen next. AB describes it as the past remaining causally present through what it continues to rule out. This retention makes further form possible, but it does not necessarily involve self-maintenance, psychological memory or anything deserving moral approval.

Explanation

AB distinguishes enduring organization from arrangements that fade, and distinguishes a rock's largely passive stability from a cell's work of rebuilding its boundary. Kept form becomes self-kept form only at the further threshold of maintaining its own conditions. The separate warning that persistence is not goodness prevents treating successful retention as moral justification.

PB describes the kept past as the ground of the new. RB1 emphasizes retained capacities to sustain and transform becoming rather than mere form or code. RB2 conditionally interprets lawfulness as historically retained constraint, without claiming to prove that laws evolve. RB3 calls persistence of selected organization ontological memory, explicitly distinguishing it from psychological memory and locating stabilization within ongoing energetic processes.

Scope and attribution

AB owns the explicit definition; the other books own developments rather than literal occurrences of the heading.

AB — The Actual Book

Stabilized constraint keeps the past causally present; active self-maintenance is a further achievement.

Occurrence locators: 55, 63, 64, 133, 143, 144, 145, 146, 148; Glossary: 222.

PB — The Possible Book

The kept past supplies the ground on which new becoming builds.

Occurrence locators: 95, 101, 103.

RB1 — The Real Book, Volume I: The Possible Is Real

Retention concerns capacities for sustaining and transforming becoming, not simply enduring form or code.

Occurrence locators: 273.

RB2 — The Real Book, Volume II: Becoming Is Being

Lawfulness is conditionally interpreted as historically retained constraint; evolution of laws is not demonstrated.

Occurrence locators: 257, 269; Notes: 192.

RB3 — The Real Book, Volume III: Murmurations

Ontological memory concerns selected organization, and stabilization continues through energetic processes.

Occurrence locators: 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 34, 89, 105, 147, 235, 263, 264, 343.

Background used in the editorial explanation

Named theories and mechanisms are distinguished from neighboring background, homonyms and the author’s own synthesis. Reproduced AI passages retain their separate voice.