The Dark Universe as an Ontological Error: III What the Cosmos Looks Like Through a Relational Ontology

In Part I, we diagnosed the ontological errors that led physics to conjure dark matter and dark energy.

In Part II, wee reconstructed cosmology using the relational triad of system, instance, and construal, showing how the “dark sector” dissolves once the representational stance is abandoned.

Now, in this final post, we turn to the constructive question:

What does the universe look like once physics’ ontological mistakes are removed?

What emerges is not a modified version of contemporary cosmology, but a fundamentally different picture of how cosmological phenomena actualise.

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1. Gravity Without Ontological Curvature

In the representational framework, gravity is:

• curvature of a pre-given metric

• sourced by mass–energy

• existing independently of observers or construals

In the relational framework, this collapses.

A metric is not an ontic structure; it is a construal of relational potential.

Curvature, therefore, is not a property of the universe but one of the semantic patterns that can be used to organise experience.

Thus:

Gravity is the patterned way relational potential constrains actualisation at large scales.

It is not “how matter bends spacetime,” but how a particular system construes the possibilities of motion relative to a perspectival cut.

What this yields:

• No missing curvature sources → no need for dark matter

• No intrinsic geometric tension → no need for dark energy

• No requirement that all scales obey the same construal

Gravity becomes a family of relational construals, not a single ontic engine.

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2. Cosmological Redshift as a Relational Phenomenon

Under the representational ontology, redshift demands metric expansion.

Under relational ontology:

Redshift actualises differently under different construals.

It can be construed:

• as kinematic,

• as metric,

• as energetic,

• or as perspectival,

depending on the system–instance cut.

No construal has privileged ontological status.

Thus, acceleration of the redshift curve is not evidence of “negative pressure” in the vacuum.

It is evidence of how the cosmological system structures potential at the scale of the phenomenon.

“Dark energy” simply vanishes as a category mistake.

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3. Structure Formation Without Invisible Mass

In the representational ontology, galaxies need dark matter halos to form and hold themselves together.

In the relational ontology, this is a mis-framing of the problem.

Structure formation depends on:

• how the system structures relational potential,

• how actualisations cut through that potential,

• and how construals coordinate those actualisations.

Once these are treated as relational rather than representational:

• “halos” become construal artefacts,

• “missing mass” becomes misaligned semantics,

• “binding” becomes relational coherence,

• and “collapse” becomes actualisation pathways, not gravitational wells.

Galaxies do not require invisible scaffolding.

They require coherent relational pathways within a system of potential.

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4. Large-Scale Coherence Without a Cosmic Fluid

The idea of dark energy emerged because cosmologists treated the universe as a physical fluid whose expansion rate must obey certain equations.

Relational ontology rejects the fluid model entirely.

The universe is not a fluid.

It is not a substance.

It is a system of potentials, and its large-scale coherence is a semantic feature:

a stability of construal across scales.

Redshift, anisotropies, clustering, voids — these are patterns of actualisation within the system, not behaviours of a “cosmic medium.”

Thus:

• No accelerating fluid

• No vacuum pressure

• No mysterious energy density

• No 70% of the universe doing “negative work”

Only:

• patterns of actualisation,

• stabilised by relational coherence,

• structured by the system as theory-of-potential.

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5. What Remains When the Dark Sector is Removed

When we lift out dark matter and dark energy, what is left is:

• The same observational phenomena

• The same catalogues of galaxies

• The same CMB anisotropies

• The same redshift-distance relations

• The same dynamical behaviours

But their interpretation changes entirely.

Nothing was missing in the cosmos.

Something was missing in the ontology.

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6. The Universe Becomes Luminous Once Relation Replaces Representation

What emerges is a universe without ghosts:

• No invisible mass propping up galaxies

• No invisible pressure accelerating expansion

• No bookkeeping errors requiring 95% of the universe to be invisible

• No forced patches to inconsistent equations

What emerges instead is a universe that is:

• perspectival,

• relational,

• co-actualised,

• coherent,

• and semantically structured.

Phenomena become luminous because nothing is reified that should remain relational.

The “dark” was never about matter or energy.

It was about the metaphysics used to delineate what counts as real.

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Closing: The Cosmos Never Hid Anything — Physics Hid It From Itself

Once we take system, instance, and construal as fundamental, we see that the darkness in cosmology was not in the universe but in its conceptual frame.

This series has traced the consequences of that error:

1. Part I: Revealed how the representational ontology forces physics to invent dark matter and dark energy.

2. Part II: Showed how a relational ontology dissolves the contradictions.

3. Part III: Offered a relational reconstruction of cosmology that is coherent, luminous, and free of ontological artefacts.

There is no dark universe.

There is only an ontology that mistook its own shadows for the cosmos.