Path-Dependent Meaning: Closed-Loop Holonomy Under Sequential Viewpoint Projection

Meaning is widely understood to depend on perspective, yet whether the path through perspectives—not merely the final one—leaves a measurable trace in meaning structure has never been tested. Here we show that sequential viewpoint projections produce closed-loop holonomy in meaning space: when a viewpoint traverses a loop and returns to its starting point, the resulting meaning structure differs significantly from a single-projection baseline, beyond same-viewpoint drift (p = 0.010). This holonomy requires projection composition—breaking the sequential chain eliminates it (p < 0.0001)—and is invariant to path parameterization: abrupt and gradual viewpoint transitions yield identical holonomy after step-count correction (Δ = 0.001, p = 0.81). Furthermore, holonomy scales with loop complexity, increasing monotonically with the number of distinct viewpoints visited under fixed step count (ρ = 0.31, p = 0.012). These results establish that meaning transport through viewpoint space has geometric structure, and that this structure does not require the adiabatic conditions demanded by Berry phase in quantum physics, pointing to a more general projection geometry.