Why is there change and what drives it? (North Austin)

Why is there change at all? Not merely why do particular things change, nor how change unfolds according to physical laws, but why reality is dynamic rather than still. Why does anything move from one state to another

Across history, different philosophies and religious thoughts have tried to answer these questions.

Creationist accounts suggest that change belongs to a contingent world sustained by a transcendent source.

Darwinian evolution portrays change as the engine of life itself, a continuous process of variation and selection unfolding through time.

Emanationist traditions describe change as a gradual descent from unity into multiplicity, an ontological distancing from a first principle.

Each framework implies a different metaphysical foundation: change as willed, change as fundamental process, or change as necessary overflow.
Does change signal imperfection, creativity, decay, or possibility? And if change is fundamental, what—if anything—remains constant beneath it? This discussion invites us to consider whether becoming is the deepest feature of reality, or whether permanence lies hidden beneath the flux.