Abstract

Parmenides declared Being one — yet what is “the One”? Heraclitus denied we step twice into the same river — yet why not? Heidegger severed beings from Being — but how then can Dasein be-with? To these persistent aporias in Western thought, this paper answers from an unexpected source: the archaic Chinese H-e-t-u (River Diagram). Using a spare, self‑consistent symbolism (●, ○, ⊙, →, ∟, …), we construct a relational ontology that shifts from describing what appears to deriving how appearing must occur — offering not another interpretation of reality, but the generative logic of its Descriptiveness. The system rests on one axiom: to be is to relate. Any determinate phenomenon (⊙X) demands dual grounding: a one‑dimensional “relative‑to” (→) and a two‑dimensional “relative‑through” (∟) relation. Recursively applied, this constraint necessarily produces a closed cycle of five primordial phenomena — from whose dual‑relational positions the decimal digits 0–9 emerge, not by convention but as the intrinsic naming‑scheme of relational difference. By then formalizing the indescribable background (○) as the imaginary unit i, we derive the defining relation i² = –1, thereby anchoring complex numbers in the very logic of appearance and explaining how multiple, Networked perspectives cohere within a single descriptive space. Thus mathematics reveals itself neither as a Platonic domain of objects nor as a formal game: it is existence’s own syntax for self‑description in pure relation. This work proposes a relational, endogenous, and non‑aprioristic foundation for mathematical ontology — and with it, a coherent meta‑framework for re‑thinking physics, consciousness, and the possibility of shared knowledge.