TIME AS NON-ENFORCING ORDERING IN PHYSICAL EVOLUTION

This paper applies a strict mechanism-only, elimination-by-necessity framework to the concept of time to determine whether time itself constitutes a physically enforcing mechanism. By admitting only localized energy–momentum exchange, reciprocal back-reaction, locality, and finite signal propagation as physically real, the analysis tests whether time exerts force, carries conserved quantities, or acts on physical systems. Removing time as a causal agent while retaining all enforcing mechanisms leaves physical evolution invariant, demonstrating that ordering and irreversibility arise from interaction and causality rather than from time acting as an entity. The paper establishes by logical necessity that time functions solely as a non-enforcing descriptive ordering of physical events.