# On the Shoulders of Giants This work stands firmly on the foundations laid by many before us. The idea that reality, thought, and systems begin with a **distinction** has appeared in philosophy, cybernetics, sociology, and logic long before this project. Our contribution does not replace or diminish these achievements — it continues them in a new form, translating their insights into a minimal, formally explicit, and machine-verifiable proof. --- ## George Spencer-Brown — *Laws of Form* (1969) - **Contribution:** Introduced the “mark” and the act of distinction as the origin of form. - **Legacy:** Inspired decades of cross-disciplinary work in logic, mathematics, and systems theory. ## Niklas Luhmann — *Social Systems* (1984) - **Contribution:** Applied the idea of distinction as the basic operation of social systems. - **Legacy:** Expanded the scope of Spencer-Brown’s concept into sociology and communication theory. ## Heinz von Foerster, Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela — Cybernetics & Autopoiesis - **Contribution:** Framed distinction and observation as the foundation of self-referential systems and living processes. - **Legacy:** Connected logical difference to the dynamics of cognition and life. ## Gotthard Günther — Polycontextural Logic - **Contribution:** Extended logic to multiple “contextures” and explored the formalization of difference. - **Legacy:** Pushed the boundaries of what logic could express about systems and perspectives. --- **Acknowledgement:** Without these and many other contributions, this project would not exist. What is presented here is not an attempt to replace their insights, but to honor them by carrying the core idea — that all begins with a distinction — into a minimal formal framework and demonstrating its irrefutability with modern proof tools.