Conventional thought treats time and space as containers: an independent temporal sequence unfolding within a three-dimensional spatial stage. Relational ontology demands a radical departure. Here, neither time nor space exists independently; both are emergent, perspectival, and inseparable from the relational systems that instantiate them.
Time as Relational Horizon
Time is not an absolute metric but a cut: a perspectival instantiation of potentialities. Each system, when actualised, brings forth a unique temporal horizon. What we perceive as duration is the relational contour traced by successive instantiations, constrained by the system’s internal possibilities. In this sense, time is system-relative: it is the phenomenon of difference actualising within potentiality.
Consider a river flowing. Classical physics treats water as moving through space over time. In relational ontology, the river and its flow are co-constituted: the “flow” emerges only through the act of actualisation, and temporal progression is a reflection of successive instantiations from a given perspective. Remove the system, and the notion of flow — of time itself — dissolves.
Space as Emergent Construal
Space is similarly not a neutral stage. Distance, separation, and orientation are relational: they measure potential interactions actualised within a system. Space emerges through the perspectival act of construal — the delineation of one phenomenon from another. Without such construal, spatial separation is meaningless. Space is contingent, contextual, and perspectival; it is a relational trace of difference, not an independent expanse.
Interdependence of Time and Space
Time and space are inseparable. The actualisation of a system produces both a temporal horizon and a spatial configuration simultaneously. One does not exist without the other: a relational cut in time necessarily creates a relational cut in space. The duality is not a property of the world “out there” but of the relational construal that brings the world into phenomenological presence.
Implications for Phenomena and Meaning
If time and space are relational, the meaning of events is inseparable from their spatiotemporal instantiation. Systems do not merely unfold in time and occupy space; they bring these dimensions into being, each through perspectival construal. Phenomena are inseparable from their spatiotemporal emergence. Any attempt to treat time or space as independent abstractions risks obliterating the relational texture of reality itself.
Next in this series: Time as Relational Horizon — we will explore the contours of temporal emergence within systems, examining how time is traced, experienced, and constrained perspectivally.
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