Physics Without Divinity: 1 Constraint without Commandment

Law as Relational Regularity

Physics still speaks the language of command. To call something a “law” is to borrow from the old imagination of decree — a world ordered by commandment, sustained by obedience. Gravity “demands,” particles “must” behave, systems “obey” equations. Even stripped of theological clothing, the metaphor persists: nature is a governed realm, order a matter of command.

But relation has no sovereign. Regularities are not decrees imposed from above, but stabilities that emerge within the ongoing dance of processes. To name a “law of nature” is to describe a pattern of coordination, a constraint visible when potentials actualise together. The regularity is not absolute; it is perspectival, holding only within the conditions where that relational configuration persists.

Constraint, then, is not commandment but possibility’s contour. It is the edge that channels how potential may actualise, the boundary that gives shape to process. What physics calls “law” is nothing more — and nothing less — than the regularity of relation: not a statute written into the cosmos, but a rhythm that emerges wherever processes intertwine.