Change Before Time: Empirical Equivalence, Mechanics, and Structures for Dynamic Metaphysics

This paper argues that, within established mechanics, a change-first structure of mechanics—one that does not treat background time as fundamental—is as empirically licensed as the familiar time-first structure. Carlo Rovelli’s generally covariant framework and Wonchull Park’s initial conditions framework each provide an independent demonstration of this possibility across classical, relativistic, and quantum mechanics. Park’s Reality View Equivalence is employed as an epistemological constraint on claims of compatibility at the physics–metaphysics interface. The resulting picture of change before time yields structural resources that offer, without mandating, ways of supporting metaphysical projects that emphasize the dynamic nature of reality. Two worked examples are used to illustrate this application: first, by placing local becoming within the change-first state package, and, second, by treating entities that participate in change-first states as necessarily dynamic and thus, arguably, processual.