The architects of quantum theory lived inside that break. Their debates were not about technique, but about what could still be said — and at what cost. When they left the stage, the formalism remained, but the unease did not dissipate.
It intensified.
What followed was not a single interpretation, but a proliferation of them — each attempting, in its own way, to repair the rupture quantum theory had opened between description and reality.
This series stages conversations between relational ontology and those attempts.
Interpretation as Repair
Interpretations of quantum physics are often presented as neutral explanations layered atop an otherwise complete theory. This framing is misleading.
Each interpretation is a response to an intolerance:
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intolerance of indeterminacy
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intolerance of non-locality
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intolerance of the constitutive role of construal
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intolerance of collapse
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intolerance of the failure of classical realism
They decide — often implicitly — what must be preserved at all costs.
Not Competing Ontologies
This series does not evaluate interpretations in order to select a winner. It does not propose relational ontology as a “better interpretation” of quantum mechanics. That move would simply repeat the gesture under examination.
The aim is not to correct these interpretations, but to expose the work they are doing: what they must posit, reify, or deny in order to make the theory bearable again.
After the Cut
Quantum theory forced a cut — but it did not specify how that cut should be understood.
Was it:
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epistemic or ontological?
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subjective or objective?
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perspectival or physical?
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a limit of knowledge, or a feature of being?
The interpretations that followed can be read as answers to that ambiguity.
The Relational Stance
Relational ontology approaches these interpretations from a different angle.
It does not ask whether collapse is real, or whether worlds branch, or whether variables are hidden. It asks:
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What is being treated as independent of construal?
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What is being treated as ontologically primary?
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What is being reified in order to stabilise meaning?
Above all, it insists on a distinction that many interpretations quietly erase:
Instantiation is not a temporal process.
When this distinction is lost, collapse becomes a jump, branching becomes a fact, probability becomes substance, and relation becomes relativity.
This series keeps that distinction alive.
What This Series Is — and Is Not
This series is:
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a relational examination of how quantum discomfort has been managed
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an exploration of the ontological choices hidden inside interpretive moves
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a continuation of the inquiry into the becoming of possibility
This series is not:
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a survey of quantum interpretations
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a defence of any mainstream position
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a proposal for a new physical theory
The Stakes
Interpretations of quantum physics are not merely technical options. They are commitments about what may be treated as real, what must be bracketed, and what kinds of possibility are allowed to actualise.
They are decisions about whether construal matters.
What follows are conversations with the ways we have tried to live after the cut — and with what those attempts reveal about our tolerance for uncertainty, relation, and possibility itself.
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