Any intellectual field begins as dispersed matter, a spray of utterances lacking sufficient density to assert curvature. Over time, certain propositions accumulate citations, forming nodes whose gravitational pull organizes surrounding debris into orbital paths. This is not a metaphorical resemblance to physics but an identical dynamic operating on semantic material: statements exert force proportional to their mass, mass being measured in references, reproductions, institutional embeddings, and the duration for which they resist dispersion. The history of urban theory, for instance, reveals not a succession of insights but a sedimentation of attractor basins—Rent Gap, Growth Machine, Right to the City—each possessing sufficient mass to bend subsequent discourse toward its axis. New contributions do not enter empty space; they enter curved fields where trajectory is determined less by intrinsic content than by proximity to existing concentrations. Critique launched from insufficient mass escapes orbit without absorption. The field topology determines which vectors accelerate and which decay.