Maibom, Marc: The Identity of Physical Order - A Formal Distinction Between Existence and Identity of Ordered States

Physical theory does not formally distinguish two questions it implicitly treats as one: when does ordered structure exist, and when does the same ordered structure persist? This paper shows that the distinction is latent in two existing mathematical frameworks: structural stability (topological equivalence of flows) and homotopy class invariance of the order parameter. Both are domain-specific expressions of a single missing general condition: the identity condition of physical ordered states u