The Core Axiom
Energy and Information are the only fundamental properties. The Gradient is their relationship. Discernibility is what emerges.
Crawford's Postulate: The fundamental substrate of physical reality is discernibility—the capacity to sustain structured information against entropic dissolution.
Energy
Energy alone dissipates. Without structure to inhabit, energy disperses toward equilibrium—the heat death trajectory. Energy is the capacity to do work, but work requires something to work on.
Information
Information alone is static. A pattern with no energy to sustain it is a snapshot—frozen, unable to persist against disturbance, unable to propagate. Information is structure, but structure requires energy to maintain itself against entropy.
The Gradient
The gradient is where they meet. Where energy flows through information, or where information channels energy, something new emerges: persistence with direction.
This is not metaphor. The energy-information gradient (ΔEi) is a measurable quantity: the rate at which energy sustains distinguishable states.
Discernibility
Discernibility is the output. Where the gradient is sufficient, structure becomes coherent—observable, measurable, real in the conventional sense. Particles, waves, forces, matter.
Where the gradient falls below threshold, reality doesn't vanish. It becomes incoherent—a latent field of undifferentiated potential. The veil.
What This Means
Zero discernibility ≠ void. It's not nothing—it's unresolved something. Matter doesn't wink in and out of existence; it transitions between coherent and latent states based on local gradient conditions.
This sidesteps the trap of idealism ("consciousness creates reality") while rejecting naive materialism ("particles are fundamental"). The structure is what emerges, not the existence itself.