Consider how science works. A researcher observes something unexpected — a disturbance. She gathers data, reads prior work, forms a preliminary picture. Then she commits to a hypothesis. She builds an experiment, tests it, discards what fails, selects what survives. She publishes — the work encounters the world. Other researchers replicate, challenge, extend. If the finding holds, it becomes established knowledge: maintained, defended, gradually refined.
That sequence — perturbation, construction, encounter, conservation — is the same sequence a star follows from gas cloud to main sequence. The same sequence a cell follows from signal to division. The same sequence a tumour follows from mutation to metastasis. It is the path every dissipative system takes when it maintains itself by spending energy.
The scientific method is itself a dissipative process. The hypothesis lives in the Construction regime — built under constraint, tested, some fail, one is selected. Peer review is Encounter — what was built meets the world. Textbook knowledge is Conservation — maintained by the field until the next perturbation displaces it. The method runs the geometry it was looking for.
Generative Geometry is the structural science underneath the domains. It does not replace physics or biology or ecology. It identifies the geometry that all dissipative processes share — the sequence, the regime transitions, the fractal depth — and derives it from two operations and nothing else. The formula above is the same formula that predicts drug combination response rates in oncology. It is not an analogy. It is one geometry, expressed in different materials.
Every dissipative system is governed by two operations. Hold maintains coherence. Cross enables transformation. Each is either latent or active. The cycle moves through all four combinations in a fixed order — each regime requires the output of the previous one.
Each regime subdivides into four positions through the same two-operation logic. Click any position to see the same step in three different systems.
Explore the geometry. Run the calculations. Verify the predictions. Every tool computes from first principles — two operations, integers, and π.
Generative Geometry was developed by Raimo van der Klein over twenty-five years of observing change in teams, organisations, and systems. The pattern was discovered empirically, formalised structurally, and tested quantitatively across seven scientific domains.
Van der Klein is COO of Pacmed (AI-powered hospital capacity management) and co-founder of Layar (world's first mobile AR browser, 40M+ users). The book Riding Change: How Change Moves, and How to Move With It presents the framework for a general audience.
This is an independent research programme. It is not affiliated with any university or institution. The work is published open-access and the tools are freely available. The geometry belongs to everyone who studies it.