After the Reluctant Universe: Dialogue IV — On Singularities and Horizons (as Limits of Construal)

Characters:

Professor Quillibrace

Mr Blottisham

Miss Elowen Stray

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Blottisham:

Now surely we have reached the real monsters. Singularities. Event horizons. Points of infinite density. Reality tearing itself apart.

Quillibrace:

No monsters. Only impatience.

Elowen Stray:

Impatience with what?

Quillibrace:

With the limits of a construal that has already done all the work it can.

Blottisham:

But the equations diverge! Infinities appear! That must mean something has gone terribly wrong in the universe.

Quillibrace:

It means something has gone wrong in your insistence on continuing to ask the same kind of question.

Elowen Stray:

So a singularity isn’t a thing at all?

Quillibrace:

Correct. It is a signal.

Blottisham:

A signal of what? Cosmic disaster?

Quillibrace:

Of ontological overreach.

Elowen Stray:

You mean we’ve pushed a model past the conditions that make it intelligible?

Quillibrace:

Exactly.

Blottisham:

But surely something is there. At the centre of a black hole. At the beginning of time.

Quillibrace:

That “surely” is doing an enormous amount of unjustified work.

Elowen Stray:

So when physics speaks of infinite curvature…

Quillibrace:

…it is not describing an extreme object, but announcing the collapse of a geometric fiction.

Blottisham:

That feels like evasion.

Quillibrace:

It feels like that only if you mistake models for mirrors.

Elowen Stray:

And event horizons? The point of no return?

Quillibrace:

Not points. Relations.

Blottisham:

Relations that trap things forever!

Quillibrace:

Relations that mark the limits of what can be coherently described from a given standpoint.

Elowen Stray:

So a horizon isn’t a wall in space…

Quillibrace:

…it is a boundary in intelligibility.

Blottisham:

Then nothing special happens at the horizon?

Quillibrace:

Nothing ontological. Only a transition in what distinctions can be maintained.

Elowen Stray:

So falling through a horizon isn’t entering a new region of reality…

Quillibrace:

…it is leaving behind a way of speaking that presupposed continuity beyond its reach.

Blottisham:

I find this profoundly unsatisfying. I wanted drama.

Quillibrace:

Reality is under no obligation to entertain you.

Elowen Stray:

So singularities and horizons are not edges of the universe…

Quillibrace:

…but edges of a construal that mistook its own success for universality.

Blottisham:

Then the universe never breaks?

Quillibrace:

No. Only our insistence that it behave like an object.

Elowen Stray:

And once we see them as limits…

Quillibrace:

…the infinities evaporate, and the panic with them.

Blottisham:

You’ve taken away the abyss.

Quillibrace:

I’ve taken away the category error that created it.

(A long pause. Blottisham looks disappointed but calmer. Elowen looks almost relieved, as if a great pressure has quietly lifted.)