The Becoming of Possibility: 11/19/25

Wednesday, 19 November 2025

Relational Light — Photons, Frequencies, and the Ontology of Electromagnetism: 4 Electromagnetism as Emergent Relational Patterning

Classical electromagnetism describes electric and magnetic phenomena using fields and Maxwell’s equations. These are typically treated as real entities existing independently of the systems that interact with them: fields in space, forces on charges, and waves propagating through a medium or vacuum.

From a relational standpoint, however, such ontological commitments are unnecessary. There are no independent fields or forces, no substrate carrying energy. Instead, all electromagnetic phenomena emerge naturally as coherence and modulation of relational potentiality.

1. Fields as Descriptions of Relational Coherence

Maxwell’s equations describe observable regularities, not ontological substances. Each “field” can be reinterpreted as:

a representation of coherence constraints among successive actualisations,
a map of potentiality patterns across interacting systems,
a guide to how relational ordering will manifest in empirical phenomena.

Electric and magnetic “forces” are therefore perspectival effects of modulation in these patterns, not intrinsic interactions acting across space.

2. EM Waves as Pattern Propagation

Classically, electromagnetic waves are oscillations in electric and magnetic fields. Relationally:

Wave-like behaviour emerges from ordered sequences of actualisations, constrained across multiple interacting systems.
Interference, diffraction, and polarization arise naturally from pattern compatibility across relational horizons.
Propagation is perspectival: what appears as a wave moving through space is a coherent unfolding of relational cuts, constrained by system-specific potentiality.

No spatial medium is required; the “wave” is the structural form of relational patterning itself.

3. Energy, Momentum, and Photon Interactions

Electromagnetic energy and momentum are classically attributed to fields or photons. Relationally:

These quantities reflect the tension and stability of patterning across successive cuts, analogous to momentum in massive systems.
When photons interact with matter, observable effects are reconfigurations of the relational potentiality field that produce energy and momentum transfers as construed phenomena.
Conservation laws emerge naturally from the stability of patterning under modulation, not from intrinsic properties of objects or fields.

This unifies light and matter within a single relational dynamics framework.

4. Relational Coherence Explains Classical Phenomena

All classical EM phenomena follow directly:

Reflection and refraction: patterning reorganises to maintain relational coherence at boundaries.
Diffraction and interference: multiple patterns overlap within a shared horizon, producing emergent ordering effects.
Polarization: arises from directional constraints in potentiality horizons.

No metaphysical field is needed; all phenomena are constraints on relational patterning actualised across successive cuts.

5. Integration with Photons and Frequency

Photons remain sequences of null cuts at the limit of potentiality.
Frequency is the rhythm of these cuts, as construed by system horizons.
Electromagnetic phenomena are emergent patterns of photon sequences interacting with other systems, producing coherence and modulation that manifest as observable electric and magnetic effects.

Thus, the relational picture unites:

Photon ontology (null cuts and frequency)
Horizon dynamics (redshift and blueshift)
Electromagnetic coherence (interaction patterns and observables)

into a single coherent framework, free of classical field metaphysics.

6. Relational Electromagnetism and Dynamics

Electromagnetism, like motion and light, is no longer an abstract system of forces and fields. It is a pattern of relational coherence constrained across horizons:

What appears as a “field” is a description of compatible potentiality constraints.
Interactions are local reconfigurations of pattern stability.
Wave phenomena are emergent consequences of relational ordering.

This framework naturally integrates with relational geodesics and dynamics, allowing light, photons, and EM phenomena to be understood consistently as constraints and patterns within relational potentiality, without ever invoking independent space, time, or intrinsic properties.

7. Closing Thoughts

The Relational Light series reframes classical electromagnetism from a metaphysical theory of fields and particles to a fully relational ontology:

Photons are sequences of null cuts.
Frequency is a pattern of construal across relational horizons.
Redshift and blueshift are horizon dynamics.
Electromagnetic phenomena are emergent coherence and modulation of relational potentiality.

Light, in this view, is not something that moves, vibrates, or carries energy independently. It is a relational phenomenon, entirely defined by the ordering, coherence, and modulation of successive actualisations.

Together with the Relational Motion and geodesics frameworks, this series completes a relational replacement for classical kinematics, dynamics, and electromagnetism, providing a coherent foundation for future exploration of quantum relational phenomena.

Relational Light — Photons, Frequencies, and the Ontology of Electromagnetism: 3 Redshift and Blueshift as Horizon Dynamics

In classical physics, redshift and blueshift are described as changes in the wavelength or frequency of light due to relative motion (Doppler effect) or gravitational influence. These descriptions rely on representational assumptions: light as a wave traveling through space, spacetime as a background, and frequency as an intrinsic oscillation.

From a relational perspective, these assumptions are unnecessary and misleading. Light is not a wave propagating through space; photons are sequences of null cuts, and frequency is not an intrinsic oscillation but a pattern of actualisation across relational horizons. Redshift and blueshift are therefore manifestations of horizon dynamics, not intrinsic changes in photons.

1. Horizons of Potentiality

Every system has a horizon of potentiality, defining the range and coherence of patterns it can actualise and construe. Observed phenomena emerge from the interaction of these horizons.

The emitter’s horizon constrains the patterning of successive cuts of a photon.
The observer’s horizon construes these patterns according to its own relational constraints.
Alignment or misalignment of these horizons produces apparent changes in rhythm — what classical physics calls frequency shifts.

2. Doppler Shift as Horizon Misalignment

Relative motion between emitter and observer modifies the relational alignment of their horizons:

If the observer’s horizon “compresses” the sequence of cuts, the pattern appears to occur more rapidly → blueshift.
If the horizon “stretches” the sequence, the pattern appears slower → redshift.

There is no intrinsic frequency change in the photon. The shift is a perspectival ordering effect arising from the geometry of relational horizons.

This explanation generalises naturally:

Classical Doppler formulas emerge from constraints on relative horizon alignment.
Relativistic corrections appear as natural consequences of limits imposed by potentiality horizons, not as artifacts of spacetime transformation.

3. Gravitational Shift as Horizon Modulation

Gravitational redshift, classically interpreted as time dilation along a curved geodesic, is similarly recast:

A massive system modulates the local horizon of potentiality.
Photon cuts that would appear regular in one horizon now appear stretched or compressed in another.
The observer perceives a redshift (or blueshift) according to the relational configuration of horizons.

The “curvature of spacetime” is not a background; it is an expression of relational constraints, guiding the emergent ordering of photon patterning.

4. Cosmological Redshift in Relational Terms

On cosmic scales, redshift is typically attributed to the expansion of space. Relationally:

The effective horizon of distant systems evolves over cosmological time.
Successive null cuts from distant emitters are construed across increasingly misaligned horizons.
Observed redshift reflects dynamic horizon divergence, not expansion of an external medium.

This provides a fully relational account of cosmological redshift consistent with geodesic relationalism: the patterning of light across successive actualisations reflects the evolution of relational constraints between distant systems.

5. Horizon Dynamics and Observables

Horizon dynamics explain all observable frequency shifts:

Doppler shifts: relative motion modifies horizon alignment.
Gravitational shifts: mass-induced modulation of local potentiality fields.
Cosmological shifts: evolving horizon separation across large-scale structures.

In every case, what changes is the ordering of null cuts as construed by a system, not the photon itself. Frequency shifts are relational phenomena, fully integrated with the broader geodesic and dynamics framework.

6. Integration with Geodesics and Dynamics

Redshift and blueshift provide the first bridge between photons and massive-body dynamics:

Geodesics describe the emergent trajectories of massive bodies.
Horizon dynamics describe the emergent patterns of photons.
Observed frequency shifts are relationally constrained interactions between these patterns, allowing photons to map out geodesic structure without invoking force or field.

This relational integration opens the way to the final post of the series, where electromagnetic phenomena as a whole are recast as coherence and modulation of relational potentiality, freeing them entirely from classical field metaphysics.

Relational Light — Photons, Frequencies, and the Ontology of Electromagnetism: 2 Frequency as Relational Cut, Not Intrinsic Oscillation

Classical physics treats frequency as an intrinsic property of a wave or particle: a regular oscillation in space or time. Observed shifts in frequency, whether Doppler or gravitational, are typically interpreted as changes in the intrinsic motion of the wavefront or photon.

From a relational standpoint, these assumptions collapse. There is no independent space or time in which oscillations occur, and photons have no intrinsic periodicity. Yet the phenomena remain coherent and measurable.

Frequency, in relational terms, is a description of the patterning of successive actualisations (null cuts) as construed by a system within its relational horizon. Observed frequency is thus perspectival, dependent on the alignment of potentiality constraints between the emitting system, the intervening field, and the observing system.

1. Null Cuts as the Basis of Frequency

A photon is a sequence of null cuts, each an instantiation at the boundary of potentiality. These cuts are not temporal “ticks”; they are events within a relationally structured field.

Frequency is the rhythm with which these cuts are construed to occur, not a property the photon carries. Formally:

Each cut is constrained by the potentiality horizon of both the source and observer.
The “interval” between cuts is an emergent feature of the relational ordering, not a measurable period in universal time.
Frequency differences arise from variations in horizon alignment or modulation of the potentiality field.

2. Relational Doppler Shift

Classically, the Doppler effect is a shift in observed frequency due to relative motion of source and observer. Relationally:

The “shift” is a reconfiguration of the relational horizon between emitter and observer.
When the observer’s horizon aligns differently with the source’s successive cuts, the pattern appears compressed (blueshift) or expanded (redshift).
No photon “changes speed”; the shift is entirely a perspectival pattern effect.

This immediately explains why relativistic Doppler shifts emerge naturally: the constraints of horizon alignment impose limits on pattern ordering that reproduce classical results without invoking spacetime propagation.

3. Gravitational Frequency Shift

Gravitational redshift, in classical terms, is interpreted as time dilation along a curved spacetime geodesic. Relationally:

Frequency shift arises from modulation of the potentiality horizon induced by a massive system.
Cuts that would have been regularly construed in one horizon are now reinterpreted in another horizon.
Observers constrained by a different potentiality horizon perceive the pattern differently, producing the redshift.

No curvature or clock ticking is required; the shift is a horizon-relative ordering effect, entirely consistent with relational geodesics and dynamics.

4. Frequency as a Measure of Pattern Stability

Frequency, relationally understood, also captures the stability of photon patterning across relational cuts:

High-frequency patterns correspond to tightly constrained, highly coherent sequences of null cuts.
Low-frequency patterns correspond to looser coherence, more flexible patterning across horizons.
Changes in frequency indicate modulation of the field of potentiality, whether due to relative motion, gravity, or other relational interactions.

This aligns naturally with the treatment of velocity and acceleration in dynamics: frequency is a rhythm, not a motion. Shifts are modulations, not derivatives.

5. Implications for Measurement

In practical terms:

Detectors record patterns, not intrinsic oscillations.
Observed frequency is a perspectival reconstruction: the observer aligns successive cuts and construes them as periodic.
Interference, coherence, and phase effects arise from relational ordering of multiple photon patterns across interacting horizons.

Classical wave-particle duality is thus an emergent phenomenon: frequency is pattern, observation is ordering, photons are sequences of cuts.

6. Toward Redshift, Blueshift, and EM Patterns

Having redefined frequency relationally, we are now equipped to reinterpret:

Cosmological redshift: horizon expansion and emergent ordering of photon cuts.
Gravitational shift: modulation of relational potentiality near massive bodies.
Electromagnetic coherence: relational patterning of multiple null-cut sequences across interacting systems.

These will form the subject of the next post, bridging photon ontology to observable EM phenomena.

Relational Light — Photons, Frequencies, and the Ontology of Electromagnetism: 1 What a Photon Is (Relationally)

Classical physics treats light as either a wave propagating through space or a particle carrying energy and momentum. Both accounts rely on representational assumptions: space as a container, time as a uniform background, and photons as entities with intrinsic properties that traverse the manifold of spacetime.

From the perspective of relational ontology, these assumptions are neither necessary nor coherent. There is no “space through which a photon moves,” no “time along which it travels,” and no intrinsic particle-ness or wave-ness independent of relational construal. Yet the phenomena we describe as light — propagation, frequency, interference, redshift — remain fully observable and consistent. The task of this post is to define the photon without appealing to classical metaphysics, as a pattern emergent from relational potentiality.

1. Dispensing with Particle and Wave Metaphors

The wave-particle duality arises because classical representations cannot capture the relational essence of light. In the relational view:

Light is not an object that moves.
Light is not a wave oscillating in a field.
There is no substance that “carries energy” independent of actualisation.

Instead, a photon is:

a sequence of null cuts in relational potentiality.

Each null cut is an instantiation at the limit of what is possible for a given system. The photon is the pattern formed by successive such instantiations, coherently construed across relational horizons.

2. Propagation as Perspectival Ordering

In classical thinking, photons traverse space. In relational terms, “propagation” is not motion but a perspectival ordering of instantiated potentialities:

Each cut occurs within the horizon of a system’s potentiality.
Successive cuts are constrained by relational coherence.
Observers construe these ordered cuts as continuous light “moving” from source to detector.

The photon is therefore a relational event, not a mobile entity. Its trajectory is the emergent ordering of actualisations, and its apparent motion is a property of construal rather than an intrinsic fact.

3. Frequency as Relational Patterning

Classically, frequency is an intrinsic oscillation of an electromagnetic wave. In relational ontology:

Frequency is a description of patterning across successive cuts, not an intrinsic vibration.
Observed frequency emerges from the alignment of relational horizons: the rhythm with which actualisations appear to recur from a given perspective.
Doppler shifts, gravitational shifts, and other phenomena are horizon-dependent pattern modifications, not changes in an intrinsic oscillation.

Frequency is therefore perspectival: it depends on both the system emitting the light and the system observing it. Each system construes a pattern, and the resulting rhythm is what we measure as frequency.

4. The Photon at the Limit of Potentiality

By treating photons as sequences of null cuts, we situate light at the boundary of actualisation:

The photon is an extremum of what the relational potentiality field allows.
Its “existence” is the pattern instantiated at that boundary.
Its properties — including energy and momentum in classical terms — are derivable from the patterning and tension of successive actualisations, not from an intrinsic substrate.

This aligns naturally with the relational treatment of motion and dynamics: light is simply the extreme case of coherent patterning, constrained not by space or time but by the structure of relational potentiality itself.

5. Implications for Observation

Observing a photon is not detecting a particle; it is recording the construal of a relational pattern. Detection events are cuts that instantiate the photon pattern within the observer’s potentiality horizon.

The classical “click” in a detector is the relational analogue of a null cut.
Interference and diffraction arise from the ordering and compatibility of potentiality constraints across successive cuts.
There is no paradox: apparent dualities arise naturally from the relational ordering of instantiations, not from contradictory intrinsic properties.

6. Setting the Stage for Frequency, Redshift, and EM Patterns

This relational reconception of the photon provides the foundation for the rest of the series:

Frequency emerges from patterning across cuts.
Redshift and blueshift emerge from modulation of relational horizons.
Electromagnetic phenomena emerge as coherence and modulation of relational potentiality, not as fields or forces.

In short, photons are not things, and light is not motion; light is relational pattern instantiated at the limit of potentiality, visible only through the order of successive actualisations.

Relational Motion — Velocity, Acceleration, and the Emergence of Dynamics: 4 Momentum as Tension Across Cuts

Classical mechanics introduces momentum as a quantity of motion: the product of mass and velocity. Conservation laws and collision rules follow naturally. In the Newtonian frame, momentum is an intrinsic property of objects, a substance-like feature that is exchanged or preserved.

In the relational ontology, momentum cannot be a substance, because nothing intrinsic “travels” or “accumulates” in that sense. Motion is not displacement, velocity is not a vector, and acceleration is not a force-induced change. The classical picture of momentum is entirely representational.

Yet the phenomena captured by momentum—predictable outcomes in collisions, transfers, and collective patterning—remain fully observable. Relational ontology preserves their explanatory power, but reframes momentum as tension across successive cuts of relational potentiality.

1. Momentum as Consistency of Patterning

Momentum emerges where relational patterns persist under modulation:

When a system maintains coherence of actualisations despite perturbations, it manifests stable tension.
When systems interact, what classical physics interprets as momentum transfer is actually mutual reconfiguration of potentiality horizons, producing new patterns of coherent ordering.

Thus:

Momentum ≠ substance carried by an object.
Momentum = the relational measure of pattern consistency across successive actualisations.

This reconceptualisation explains why momentum is conserved: consistent patterns persist unless the relational horizon is fundamentally restructured.

2. Collisions as Reconfigurations of Relational Fields

Classical mechanics interprets collisions as exchanges of momentum. Relationally, collisions are interactions in which potentiality fields of two systems reconfigure each other, producing new coherent patterns.

Key observations:

Patterns that were stable for each system may destabilise upon interaction.
New stable patterns emerge from the combined constraints of the interacting systems.
What is construed as “momentum transfer” is simply the alignment of emergent patterning under a new relational field.

No mass, no vector, no force is “exchanged.” Only the structure of relational potentiality shifts, producing observable continuity of pattern.

3. Tension Across Cuts

The term “tension” captures the essential relational character:

Momentum is a measure of how strongly a pattern resists modulation across cuts.
Higher momentum corresponds to more coherent, stable patterning that is less easily perturbed by interactions.
Lower momentum corresponds to less stable patterning, more readily altered by reconfigurations.

Viewed this way, the conservation of momentum is natural: a highly coherent pattern cannot vanish without the relational field itself being altered; interactions merely redistribute coherence according to the emergent relational constraints.

4. Relational Explanation of Classical Phenomena

This reconceptualisation fully reproduces classical results:

Collisions: Outcomes follow naturally from pattern coherence rules.
Elastic and inelastic interactions: Differences in emergent rhythm stability explain observed energy distribution.
Center of mass motion: Emergent patterning across system interactions reproduces classical trajectory behaviour without invoking intrinsic mass properties.

The difference is profound: the ontology is relational, not representational. No hidden quantities or substances are needed; the explanatory content arises entirely from pattern stability, modulation, and tension across cuts.

5. Momentum in the Broader Relational Framework

With this post, the relational rewrite of classical dynamics is complete:

Motion = pattern of successive actualisations.
Velocity = stability of that pattern (relational rhythm).
Acceleration = modulation of the underlying potentiality field.
Momentum = tension of pattern coherence across cuts.

The framework preserves predictive power, reproduces classical intuitions where they work, and eliminates all metaphysical baggage of intrinsic motion, forces, or substances.

It also provides a foundation for integrating these ideas with broader relational phenomena:

Geodesics describe global trajectories as emergent stability.
Dynamics, as here, describes local patterning and its modulation.
Relational light and other forthcoming series can draw on this local dynamics as the substrate for emergent behaviour.

6. Closing Thoughts

Momentum, once a seemingly intractable substance of motion, is revealed as a relationally construed measure of pattern consistency. By focusing on tension across cuts, relational ontology dissolves Newtonian metaphysics while retaining full explanatory capacity.

This concludes the Relational Motion series. Together with the geodesics framework, it provides a complete relational replacement for classical kinematics, fully grounded in perspectival actualisation and system-relative potentiality.

The natural next step is to extend relational thinking to phenomena that depend on patterns at the limit of potentiality itself: light, frequency, and the emergent behaviour of electromagnetic phenomena. This is the domain of the forthcoming Relational Light series.

Relational Motion — Velocity, Acceleration, and the Emergence of Dynamics: 3 Acceleration as Constraint Modulation

In classical mechanics, acceleration is defined as the rate of change of velocity with respect to time. This definition brings with it the full representational apparatus of classical thought: velocity as a property of an object, time as an external parameter, and motion as passage through a spatial manifold.

In a relational ontology, none of these structures exist independently of construal. Velocity, as the previous post established, is not an intrinsic state but a rhythm: a stability of patterning across successive actualisations. Acceleration, consequently, cannot be a derivative of that rhythm. It is not a change of a quantity, but a shift in the underlying relational potentiality that allows certain rhythms to stabilise.

The central thesis of this post is straightforward:

Acceleration is the modulation of relational constraints—a reconfiguration of the field of potentiality that alters the coherence of successive actualisations.

This reframing eliminates forces, fields, and intrinsic “changes of motion” while retaining the explanatory content of dynamics. It positions acceleration as a property of the relational field, not of the object construed within it.

1. Why Acceleration Cannot Be “Change of Velocity”

Velocity, relationally understood, is already derivative:

It is not a quantity in the system.
It is a construed pattern of the system’s successive actualisations.

To define acceleration as “change of velocity” therefore presupposes:

that velocity is an object-level property;
that time is an independent parameter;
that change is measured against a background that remains fixed.

But the relational ontology denies all three.

There is no intrinsic state of motion; no universal time; no stable background for evaluating change.

Acceleration must therefore be reconceived without appeal to representational structures. What remains is the relational field itself—the constraints that shape the coherence of actualisations.

2. Stable Potentiality Fields and the Relational Analogue of Inertia

From the perspective of relational ontology, what classical mechanics calls “uniform motion” is simply the persistence of a stable pattern of actualisation. This stability arises because the system’s field of relational potentiality is coherent, unperturbed, and locally uniform.

Thus the relational analogue of inertial motion is:

a rhythm sustained by a stable constraint field.

No force is required to maintain it, because no “motion” in the classical sense is being maintained. What persists is pattern, not momentum as a quantity.

This sets the stage for acceleration:

a modulation of the relational potentiality field that disrupts pattern stability.

3. Acceleration as Modulation, Not Derivative

Acceleration, relationally construed, occurs when:

the constraints that shape successive actualisations shift,
producing a different coherence pattern across cuts,
which construal organises as a change of motion.

But importantly:

Nothing “changes” within the object.
There is no “state of motion” that is being altered.
There is no intrinsic vector being updated.

What changes is the horizon of allowable patterning.

The system actualises differently because the relational field makes different patterns available.

Thus:

Acceleration = modulation of relational potentiality.

This modulation may be smooth (producing what classical mechanics calls constant acceleration) or irregular (producing complex motion), but in every case, the acceleration is a property of the relational structure, not the object.

4. Why Acceleration Feels “Force-like”

The classical picture treats force as the cause of changes in motion. From a relational perspective, what is felt or observed as “force” is simply the experiential mark of constraint modulation.

When the field of potentiality shifts:

patterns that were coherent become unstable,
new patterns become viable,
successive actualisations no longer fit the old rhythm,
and construal organises this as an “acceleration.”

This is why acceleration is perceptible in a way that inertial motion is not. When the relational field is stable, patterning flows smoothly; when it modulates, the system experiences the shift. There is no separate force acting on an object—only the relational structure changing around it.

This is why forces do not exist in this ontology. They are metaphors for constraint modulation.

5. Gravity as the Paradigm Case

The geodesics series already reframed gravity not as a force but as a relational horizon effect: systems actualise patterns that maximise coherence within a potentiality gradient. That analysis allows us to see gravitational acceleration as:

not attraction,
not a field interaction,
but a modulation of the relational potentiality structure
such that the stable rhythm of a system’s actualisation aligns with what classical theory calls “free fall.”

In Einsteinian terms, free fall is inertial motion; in relational terms, it is unmodulated rhythm within a structured potentiality horizon. The “acceleration” is not experienced because it is not a perturbation of pattern; it is the pattern itself.

This gives the relational ontology a natural integration of gravitational acceleration without invoking spacetime curvature or force.

6. Non-Gravitational Acceleration Without Forces

What about accelerations in laboratory settings—pushes, pulls, collisions?

From the relational perspective, these are simply cases where:

one system modulates the constraint field of another,
altering the coherence of its successive actualisations,
generating a new rhythm construed as a change of velocity.

There is no quantity of momentum transferred, because momentum (as the next post will show) is not a substance but a measure of pattern consistency. Instead, what is “transferred” is the reconfiguration of the relational horizon so that different patterns become stable.

Collisions are therefore events in which two systems mutually reconfigure each other’s potentiality fields.

7. What Acceleration Ultimately Becomes

Acceleration, under this ontology, is:

not a vector quantity;
not a derivative of velocity;
not a response to force;
not a change in the motion of an object.

Acceleration is:

a modulation of the relational potentiality structure that shapes the coherence of successive actualisations.

It signals that the patterning available to a system has shifted. Nothing else is required.

This reconceptualisation preserves every observable feature of classical dynamics while removing its metaphysical commitments.

8. Transition to Momentum: Tension Across Cuts

With motion reconceived as pattern and velocity as rhythm, and with acceleration reconceived as constraint modulation, we are ready to reinterpret momentum.

Momentum, in relational terms, is not a substance carried through space nor a conserved quantity. It is the coherence of patterning across cuts under modulation:

relational tension held stable across shifts in potentiality.

This will be the focus of the next post.

Relational Motion — Velocity, Acceleration, and the Emergence of Dynamics: 2 Velocity as Relational Rhythm

Velocity is normally introduced as the rate at which an object changes its position in space over time. This definition already presupposes the entire representational framework we set aside in the opening post: a background space, an independent temporal axis, and an object with persisting identity moving through both.

In a relational ontology, none of these assumptions hold. There is no universal container in which change takes place, and no external clock against which to measure it. There is only a field of relational potentiality and the patterns that emerge when actualisations align across successive cuts.

The task of this post is to reconstruct velocity without any remnants of the representational picture. We treat velocity not as an intrinsic quantity carried by an object, but as a particular form of rhythm in patterning—a stability of construal across successive actualisations.

Velocity, in this model, is not something a system “has.” It is something a system enacts through the coherence of its successive instantiations.

1. Why Classical Velocity Cannot Survive Relational Ontology

Classically, velocity depends on three representational commitments:

Position: a determinate location within a universal space.
Time: a continuous parameter against which change of position is measured.
Persistence: an object whose identity spans multiple time points.

Each of these collapses under relational construal:

“Position” is not an intrinsic coordinate but a perspectival construal of relational potentiality.
“Time” is not a parameter flowing independently of events but the ordering relation among actualisations.
“Persistence” is not an underlying substrate but the stability of patterning across successive cuts.

To preserve velocity as a primitive feature would be to reintroduce representational metaphysics through the back door. Instead, we reconstrue velocity entirely within the relational field.

2. Velocity as Stability in the Ordering of Actualisations

Once motion is no longer a change of place, velocity cannot be a rate of change. What remains is the ordering relation itself.

Consider a sequence of actualisations of a system within its horizon of potentiality. If these actualisations display a consistent pattern—a coherent alignment that construal organises as a trajectory—then velocity is simply the stability of that pattern across successive cuts.

Thus:

Velocity is not a measure of displacement.
Velocity is the name for a particular mode of coherence in patterning.

When that coherence is stable, we construe the system as moving at a constant velocity. When the coherence modulates, we construe acceleration.

Velocity is therefore not a property of an object but an emergent relational rhythm.

3. Rhythm as the Right Metaphor

In relational terms, “rhythm” captures something that “rate” obscures.

A rhythm is:

patterned,
coherent,
recognisable as a unity,
but not reducible to a spatial change or to a ticking clock.

A rhythm is a temporal coherence without an independent time. It is a pattern whose stability constitutes the temporal ordering it appears to occupy.

Velocity functions analogously. It is:

the rhythm of successive actualisations,
stabilised across the relational field,
and construed as a constant pattern of ordering.

The classical intuition that constant velocity corresponds to “straight-line motion” is an artefact of representational thinking. What is actually constant is not a line but a form of relational coherence.

4. No Absolute Velocities, Only System-Relative Rhythms

Since velocity is the stability of patterning within a relational horizon, it cannot be absolute. Different systems may:

construe different patterns as “constant,”
organise successive actualisations under different horizons of potentiality,
and therefore disagree on what counts as a stable rhythm.

A system-relative velocity is not an approximation to an absolute velocity; it is the only coherent notion of velocity available in a relational ontology.

This is not a concession to relativity. It is a deeper statement: there is no metaphysical fact about how fast something “is moving.” There are only patterns of actualisation and the systems that construe them.

Relativistic velocity emerges naturally as the consequence of horizon constraints—constraints on how patterns of actualisation can cohere from different perspectival vantage points. No spacetime geometry is required; the relational horizon does the work.

5. Inertial Motion as Unmodulated Rhythm

In classical mechanics, inertial motion is defined as motion without forces: straight-line, constant-velocity motion. In relational terms, there is no straight line and no “constant velocity” in the classical sense.

What remains is:

unmodulated relational rhythm → construed as inertial motion
modulated relational rhythm → construed as acceleration

Inertia is not resistance to change; it is simply the persistence of a stable pattern of actualisation when nothing in the relational field perturbs it.

This gives us a natural relational analogue to Newton’s First Law: a system maintains its rhythm unless the potentiality field shifts in a way that modulates it.

6. What Velocity Becomes

Velocity, reconceived relationally, is:

not a vector quantity carried by a body,
not a derivative of position with respect to time,
not a fact of motion independent of construal.

Velocity is a pattern of coherence across successive actualisations, stabilised by the relational field and construed by a system that occupies a particular horizon of potentiality.

Once seen in this light, velocity becomes something subtler and more profound: a measure of how the world holds together across cuts, not how objects traverse a pre-existing space.

7. What This Sets Up for the Next Post

Velocity as relational rhythm prepares the ground for the reinterpretation of acceleration. In classical mechanics, acceleration is the rate of change of velocity—again tying it to a time-based representational framework.

In relational ontology, acceleration is not change of velocity. It is:

the modulation of the potentiality field,
generating shifts in the coherence of successive actualisations.

This will be the focus of the next post.

Relational Motion — Velocity, Acceleration, and the Emergence of Dynamics: 1 Motion as Pattern, Not Passage

Classical mechanics begins with an intuition so familiar it almost escapes notice: motion is something that happens in space and over time. A body “moves” by changing its position; time “passes”; space provides the container in which this passage unfolds. This framing is so deeply naturalised that even contemporary physics, for all its technical sophistication, continues to treat motion as a kind of trajectory traced through an independently existing manifold.

In this series, we set aside this entire representational architecture. We do not replace it with metaphysical alternatives—no alternative space, no hidden substance, no subtler field. Instead, we take the step implied by relational ontology but rarely followed through: motion is not displacement, but patterned actualisation; not passage, but ordering.

This is the conceptual pivot that allows us to rewrite dynamics without forces, without conserved quantities, and without any dependence on intrinsic properties of objects. Everything normally attributed to “motion”—velocity, acceleration, momentum—will be reconstrued as perspectival stability or modulation within a system-relative field of potentiality.

The aim of this opening post is simple: to dismantle the representational picture of motion as change of place, and to establish the relational alternative that guides the rest of the series.

1. The Problem with “Moving Through Space”

To say that a body moves from A to B presupposes a picture with three hidden commitments:

A universal spatial background that exists independently of anything instantiated in it.
A temporal axis against which change of position is measured.
A notion of persistence whereby “the same object” is located at different points at different times.

Each of these commitments already violates the relational ontology that treats meaning—and thus reality—as constituted only in construal. There is no universal background outside construal; no independent time against which motion unfolds; no persisting object that carries an intrinsic quantity of movement.

Motion, under this ontology, cannot be the translation of a thing through a container. It must be something that arises within the relational structure, not something that unfolds across it.

2. Successive Actualisations as the Basis of Motion

In the relational model, a “trajectory” is not a line traced through space; it is a construed ordering of successive actualisations of a system.

To say that a body “was here” and “is now there” is a second-order reconstruction of a pattern: a way of organising a series of perspectival cuts into a coherent phenomenon. The ordering is real—because meaning is reality—but its reality lies in the pattern, not in the representational picture used to construe it.

Thus:

Motion ≠ the body changing position.
Motion = the system-relative construal of a consistent pattern across successive instantiations.

Nothing “moves” in the metaphysical sense. What persists is a regularity of patterning as the system continues to actualise within its horizon of potentiality.

3. Trajectories as Emergent Stability, Not Continuous Paths

The geodesics series established that what we ordinarily call a “trajectory” is the emergent stability of patterning across cuts. There is no curve drawn through space; there is a coherence that construal organises as if it were a curve.

Motion, therefore, is not the traversal of this curve. It is simply the continuation of the same pattern of actualisation. The curve is not travelled; the pattern is maintained.

What classical mechanics treats as continuity in time is, in relational terms, stability in potentiality. A freely moving body does not “keep going”; it remains within a region of the potentiality field where successive actualisations cohere without modulation.

4. The Relational Ordering of Change

Motion becomes intelligible once we drop the representational assumption that there is a background to move in.

Motion is the name we give to a particular ordering relation among successive actualisations:

If the pattern is stable → we construe velocity.
If the pattern modulates → we construe acceleration.
If relational tension persists across cuts → we construe momentum.

These are not quantities inhering in objects. They are perspectival descriptions of how patterning holds or shifts.

The point here is not linguistic; it is ontological. There is no underlying “fact of motion” independent of the construal. What exists is the patterning itself, and motion is the phenomenon that emerges when that patterning stabilises across successive cuts.

5. No Universal Space, No Universal Time

Once motion is understood as pattern rather than passage, the classical picture collapses:

Space is not a container; it is a system-level construal of relational potentiality.
Time is not a continuum; it is the ordering relation that construal imposes on successive actualisations.
Change of place is not primitive; it is a reconstruction of patterning within a perspectival horizon.

This does not diminish the explanatory power of dynamics. It relocates it. Instead of appealing to forces and fields as external agencies that “make things move,” we will explain all dynamical phenomena as shifts in the relational structure itself.

What classical mechanics calls “motion” becomes, in this ontology, the construed ordering of actualisations within a relational field of constraints. Nothing passes through anything. Patterns hold or modulate.

6. The Path Ahead

This opening post clears the ground for a relational dynamics that keeps the explanatory richness of classical mechanics while discarding the representational metaphysics that underpinned it.

The next posts will treat:

Velocity as a form of relational rhythm or pattern stability.
Acceleration as modulation of relational potentiality.
Momentum as tension across cuts, not a substance of motion.

By the end of the series, the classical trinity of motion—velocity, acceleration, momentum—will have been reframed as perspectival construals of relational coherence, not intrinsic properties of objects.

We have eliminated passage. What remains is relation. And relation is enough.

Relational Geodesics: 3 Light, Lensing, and Relational Curvature

In the previous posts, we established that geodesics curve, not spacetime, and explored how mass modulates relational potentialities to produce curved trajectories for massive bodies. In this final post, we extend this relational perspective to photons and null geodesics, examining gravitational lensing and the ontological implications of relational curvature for light.

Light Trajectories as Relational Paths

Photons, like massive bodies, follow geodesics. However, they move along null trajectories, tracing paths at the limit of relational instantiation defined by the speed of light. From a relational-ontology perspective, the “bending” of light near a mass is not a property of spacetime itself but emerges from the modulation of relational potentialities by the mass. Each successive instantiation of the photon’s position is constrained by the relational field of nearby systems, producing the curved path we observe.

Gravitational Lensing

Gravitational lensing — the apparent deflection of light by a massive body — exemplifies relational curvature vividly:

The central mass shapes the relational field, contracting radial possibilities.
Photons, constrained by this field, follow curved geodesics.
Observers perceive the deflection as lensing, a manifestation of relational emergence rather than a bending of an independent space.

In this way, lensing is a phenomenon of perspective and relational structure: the light’s trajectory emerges from the interaction of its potential instantiations with the surrounding mass’s relational field.

Implications for Observation and Measurement

Adopting a relational view reshapes our understanding of observation:

The “distance” and “angle” of deflected light are properties of the relational system that includes the photon, the mass, and the observer.
Measurements are not readings of pre-existing spacetime geometry; they are traces of instantiated relational patterns.
Phenomena such as Einstein rings, arcs, and multiple images are expressions of the emergent geometry of geodesics, not of a bent spacetime substrate.

Ontological Reflection: Co-Actualisation Near Mass

Relational curvature highlights a profound ontological point: near mass, every instantiation — whether a planet, an asteroid, or a photon — is co-actualised within the relational field. The field is not a passive container; it is the pattern of constraints shaping what can actualise. Geodesics, in this sense, are the signature of relational emergence: they map the interaction of potentialities, constrained by the central mass, across time and space as these dimensions are perspectivally experienced.

Relational Gravity

Seen through this lens, gravity is not a force or a property of spacetime: it is the emergent modulation of relational potentialities by mass, shaping trajectories of all systems — massive or massless. Geodesics are the record of this relational shaping, the paths along which systems co-actualise, and phenomena such as light bending or planetary orbits are the visible expressions of the underlying relational patterns.

Series Conclusion:

Through this three-post series, we have traced a relational interpretation of gravity:

Geodesics curve, not spacetime — trajectories are emergent patterns of instantiation.
Mass modulates relational fields — producing radial contraction and curved geodesics for massive bodies.
Light follows relationally curved paths — gravitational lensing is an emergent phenomenon of relational constraints.

This perspective reframes relativity in relational-ontology terms: motion, causality, and trajectory are not properties of a pre-existing container but co-emergent features of systems interacting within relational fields. Understanding gravity in this way preserves the empirical predictions of relativity while illuminating the perspectival, emergent, and co-actualised nature of all trajectories in the vicinity of mass.

Relational Geodesics: 2 Radial Contraction and the Relational Field

In the first post, we clarified a crucial point: in relativity, it is the geodesics that curve, not spacetime itself. From a relational perspective, geodesics are emergent trajectories, actualised through successive instantiations constrained by the relational field of nearby mass. Here, we develop the notion of radial contraction and show how mass shapes these relational trajectories.

Radial Contraction as Modulation of Potentialities

Radial contraction is often described in classical terms as the shortening of space intervals toward a massive body. Relationally, it is not a geometric compression but a constraining of relational potentialities. Near a central mass, the set of possible trajectories available to a system is modulated: radial directions toward the mass allow fewer variations, while tangential directions may remain comparatively unconstrained.

This modulation produces the apparent curvature of geodesics: what would be a “straight path” in the absence of mass becomes a curved path when relational constraints are applied. The curvature is emergent, arising from the interaction between the system’s potentialities and the field generated by the central mass.

Geodesics as Emergent Trajectories

Consider a planet orbiting a star. Its trajectory is not guided by a force transmitted through a bent spacetime but by the relational structure imposed by the star’s mass. Each successive instantiation of the planet’s position is constrained by:

The planet’s internal dynamics and potentialities
The relational field generated by the star
The combined influence of other nearby systems (e.g., other planets)

The geodesic is the pattern traced by these successive instantiations. In relational terms, curvature is the emergent shape of the trajectory, a record of how the system’s potentialities are modulated by the mass of the star.

Planetary Orbits and Free-Fall Paths

Planetary orbits offer a clear illustration:

Radial contraction reduces the range of possible inward trajectories.
Tangential motion allows a wider spread of instantiations.
The interplay produces stable, curved orbits, which are the geodesics of the relational field.

Free-fall paths behave similarly: a body falling toward a central mass traces a curved geodesic, not because it is “falling through curved spacetime,” but because the relational field constrains its instantiations. The apparent acceleration is a reflection of the changing pattern of relational potentialities along the trajectory.

Relational Fields as Dynamic, Contextual Structures

Relational fields are not static. As systems move and actualise, they modify the field, producing feedback loops. For example:

A massive planet perturbs the relational field of its star, subtly altering trajectories of nearby asteroids.
Interactions among multiple bodies generate complex patterns of geodesics, all emergent from system-relative relational constraints.

This perspective allows us to see gravitational dynamics not as an external force or a geometric property of spacetime, but as the co-emergence of relational patterns of potentiality that shape trajectories.

Next in the series: Light, Lensing, and Relational Curvature — we will extend the analysis to photons and null geodesics, exploring gravitational lensing and the apparent bending of light entirely from the perspective of relational emergence.