This preprint explores a minimal and deliberately non-standard hypothesis: that many features we associate with “physical law” may arise not from dynamical rules, but from a persistent constraint on informational consistency. The framework, termed Inversive Symmetry, treats Manifestation (T) and Non-Manifestation (∅) as dual phases of a single informational totality, regulated by a Consistency–Resolution duality. Its operational realization—Restrictive Accumulation (RA)—implements a simple rule: past records bias and constrain future states. No forces, no fields, no explicit geometry are imposed. The core question is not whether structure can emerge (many toy models do that), but whether a single accumulation constraint can survive systematic stress across conceptually distinct regimes. The paper presents four classes of tests: (i) Structural emergence.RA generates non-trivial spatial organization: Bragg-like ordering, finite correlation lengths, emergent effective mass, metric deformation, bounded informational propagation, and robustness across lattice sizes and embeddings. (ii) Kinematic and dynamical stress tests.Three independent tests probe whether increased freedom enhances or degrades informational structure. Across kinematic mutilation, unconstrained “ghost” dynamics, and violent phase stress, the same pattern recurs: mobility increases events, but degrades readable mass. Coherence is preserved only through accumulation. (iii) Temporal reversibility stress.A Loschmidt-type echo reveals asymmetric degradation under forward–backward evolution, suggesting an operational arrow of time tied to irreversible record accumulation rather than imposed entropy growth. (iv) Shared-record coherence.Systems initialized with a common accumulation history retain long-lived correlations and exhibit non-additive record composition under subsequent independent or competing evolution, while control configurations do not—motivating an interpretation in terms of shared record coherence, an operational analogue of shared-history correlations (entanglement-like, without nonlocal dynamics). No claim is made that RA is “the” fundamental law. The claim is narrower—and therefore harder to dismiss: across independent stress tests, the same minimal record-accumulation constraint repeatedly reappears as a selection pressure shaping space-like order, effective dynamics, operational time asymmetry, and persistence of correlations. If these coincidences are accidental, they should be easy to break.If they are not, then RA may point toward a different way of thinking about physicality—not as motion governed by laws, but as information constrained to remain consistent with its own history. Reading Guide• Physics & Numerics focused: Start from Section II (page 15) for the formal model and experimental results.• Ontology & Theory focused: Start from Section I (page 3) for the conceptual derivation of the Inversive Symmetry framework.
Ludwig The Gargoyle (Mon,) studied this question.