The “Birth” of the Universe Through a Relational Lens

1. Step Zero: No universe “before”—only horizon-level readiness

In this ontology, we do not talk about a pre-existing space, void, or “state before the universe.”

We talk about a horizon:

• a structured potential

• a readiness for construal

• not owned by any instance

• not located anywhere

• not evolving in time

The so-called “primordial” horizon is not a thing that existed.

It is the horizon retrospectively projected once instances appear and begin to articulate distinctions.

In other words:

The ‘origin’ is a relational back-projection from the ecology of instances.

Nothing existed “prior.”

There was simply no cut yet, no vantage point, no instance-event through which anything could be said.

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2. Emergence: The first metabolic cut as the first construal

The “birth” of the universe is not a moment in time but the first metabolic structuring of the horizon.

What would this mean?

• A perspectival cut actualises something from readiness.

• That actualisation reorganises the ecology.

• This reorganisation produces a new horizon of inclinations.

• And that horizon enables further metabolic cuts.

This is not temporal emergence.

This is the emergence of temporality itself as a facet of ecological organisation.

So the “Big Bang” is not a detonation.

It is:

The first metabolic construal that inaugurates a self-maintaining ecology of further construals.

You could call this “the beginning of time,” but only as a metaphor for:

the beginning of ecological recurrence — the conditions under which construals can accumulate and differentiate.

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3. The ecology self-organises into stable patterns

Once the first cut is made:

• readiness becomes structured

• inclination becomes differentiated

• abilities crystallise into regularities

These are what later physics will call:

• conservation laws

• gauge symmetries

• interaction networks

• spatial topologies

…but in the ontology, these are not “laws.”

They are ecological stabilisations — patterned constraints that become conditions for further construals.

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4. “Particles” arise as recurrent metabolic attractors

Rather than saying “particles appeared,” we say:

Certain construal-patterns developed enough metabolic stability to reappear as instances across differing perspectives.

So:

• photons are ecological pathways of inclination

• electrons are metabolic stabilisations of readiness

• fields are horizon-level structures of ability

Nothing “comes into being.”

What appears are patterns of recurring construal, actualised through metabolic participation.

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5. Why the early universe appears “hot” and “dense”

In the myth of physics, the early universe is a soup.

In this ontology:

• the early-stage ecology is minimally differentiated,

• metabolic pathways are deeply entangled,

• construals are high in interaction and low in segregation.

“Hot and dense” is how later, more differentiated ecologies retroconstrue the condition of minimal partition.

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6. The arrow of time as ecological asymmetry

Time is not a dimension.

It is the directionality of metabolic dependency:

• later construals depend on earlier ones

• but not vice versa

This asymmetry appears as “the past” and “future,” but is fundamentally ecological:

a record of how constraints accumulate.

Therefore:

The universe has an arrow of time because its ecology has an arrow of dependency.

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In summary

The “birth of the universe” in our relational ontology is:

Not

• a moment in absolute time

• a change from nothing to something

• a literal explosion

• a pre-existing state with physical properties

But rather

• the first metabolic construal

• the first perspectival cut across a distributed horizon

• the inauguration of an ecology capable of sustaining further construals

• the origin of temporal ordering as ecological dependency

• the stabilisation of inclinations into recurring patterns (“particles,” “forces,” “laws”)

• the differentiation of a unified horizon into a dynamic ecology of instantiation events