Existentialism

Time is emergent, finite, and deeply personal — it is the medium of human freedom and the horizon of mortality. Heidegger's "being-toward-death" makes finitude the defining structure of temporal existence. Time is continuous and linear, flowing irreversibly forward; each moment is an unrepeatable occasion for authentic choice. Existentialism treats time not as an objective container but as the lived texture of human concern.

Space is emergent and finite — it is the "situation" into which the individual is "thrown" (Heidegger's Geworfenheit). The existentialist does not regard space as a neutral container but as the concrete environment that defines one's possibilities and constraints. Space is local: the individual is always situated here, in this particular place, confronting this particular set of circumstances.

Matter is emergent — it exists as the facticity that confronts human freedom. The body, the physical world, and the material situation are the "given" that the individual must take up and transcend through choice. Matter is conserved in the sense that physical reality persists regardless of what meaning the individual assigns to it, yet it is non-local in existential significance: the meaning of material circumstances extends beyond their physical boundaries.

Energy is emergent and finite — it is part of the factical world that the individual must engage with through authentic action. Conservation holds within the natural order, but for the existentialist, what matters is the lived engagement with finite resources and possibilities. Dispersibility is irreversible, mirroring the irreversibility of time and the finality of human choices.

Information has no pre-given meaning or structure; it is constituted by the observer's engagement with the world. The existentialist sees information as emergent from human projects — we create meaning and informational significance through our choices.