A Nonsensical Interlude: 4 After the Wall

Alice walked on for some time after Humpty Dumpty fell silent.

The wall, she noticed, remained standing. Nothing had cracked. Nothing had been enforced.

What lingered was not Humpty’s authority, but the curious ease with which it had evaporated.

She realised then that most confusions in physics are not born of bad mathematics, nor even of false claims, but of overconfident metaphors. We mistake summaries for edicts, constraints for commands, invariants for governors. We speak as if the universe were being ordered about, when all that has happened is that a system has been described coherently.

Humpty had insisted that law meant whatever he chose it to mean.

But the deeper absurdity was not his arrogance — it was how familiar it felt.

Once the idea of governance is released, explanation grows quieter, not weaker. Nothing needs to be pushed. Nothing needs to be compelled. Relations hold because removing them would leave nothing left to talk about.

The world does not obey.

It simply remains describable — for as long as we do not ask it to play the wrong role in our stories.

Alice smiled to herself and kept walking.

Behind her, the wall cast no shadow of authority at all.