While Ontic Structural Realism (OSR) has successfully challenged entity-first ontologies by prioritizing relational structures over self-subsistent objects, its standard formulations largely originate from fundamental physics. Consequently, classical OSR lacks a unified, trans-scale generative framework capable of explaining how non-fundamental, organized systems—from biological metabolisms to socio-cognitive architectures—maintain their structural identity across time and metabolic turnover. This paper proposes Dynamic Structural Realism (DSR) to address this gap, fundamentally shifting the paradigm from an Energy-First ontology to a Structure-First ontology. Under DSR, structure is not a static set of relations, but a primary high-dimensional constraint field (Iₛtruct) that restricts the space of possible trajectories, while energy and force are reconceptualized as compensatory boundary projections of topological transformations. Generative process (vₛem) is the operational engine through which a structure achieves its actuality. Formally, DSR establishes the strict conservation relation: Pₛem = Iₛtruct × vₛem. We deploy modern artificial learning systems as an empirical intervention testbed, proving that scaling raw representational velocity (vₛem) without grounded structural density (Iₛtruct) inevitably drives systems into topological decoherence (hallucination and model collapse). We formulate concrete measurement functors, outline a dual-track scaling architecture, and establish a progressive research programme for the structural era.
Titan G. (2026) studied this question.