Steretic Logic: A Logic of Privation and the Genome Method of Reasoning from Absence

This paper proposes steretic logic, a logic whose central category is privation (steresis): an absence that has a form, a place and a direction, as distinct from mere absence. The term derives from Aristotle, for whom privation was one of the principles of all coming-to-be, but it has not previously served as the basis of a logic. The central hypothesis is that structured absence is informative: the form of a missing link, determined by the surrounding structure of connections, allows its place, the conditions and time of its appearance, and its outcomes to be inferred with better than chance accuracy. The paper defines the categorical apparatus of the logic, with the genome (a concept treated as a node with its own clock and states) as its unit of analysis; introduces lacunar inference and a pending status of propositions, dormant truth, interpreted in branching-time semantics; and formulates three fundamental laws (privation, the step and three basic outcomes) as hypotheses with a stated scope. A preliminary calculus, SL₀, is constructed. In it conservativity over classical propositional logic is proved, the core inference rules are derived as theorems, and a theorem on islands shows that separate parts of a network can become connected only through exogenous links. Lacunar inference is compared with abduction, link prediction and literature-based discovery on Swanson's fish oil and Raynaud case. Dated, falsifiable forecasts and a protocol for empirical testing are provided. The work is presented as a research programme with a preliminary formal core.AI disclosure: an AI language model was used as a tool for language editing, correction of lexical errors and proofreading; the concepts, laws, hypotheses and all decisions about content are the author's, who reviewed all output and is responsible for the work.