After the Reluctant Universe: Dialogue V — On Dark Matter and Dark Energy (as Ontological Debts)

Characters:

Professor Quillibrace

Mr Blottisham

Miss Elowen Stray

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Blottisham:

Very well. You have taken away space as a place, time as a flow, curvature as a substance, and singularities as events. But surely you will not deny dark matter and dark energy. They are needed. The equations demand them.

Quillibrace:

The equations demand balance, not belief.

Elowen Stray:

Balance of what?

Quillibrace:

Of assumptions.

Blottisham:

That sounds ominous.

Quillibrace:

It should. Dark matter and dark energy are not discoveries in the usual sense. They are accounting terms.

Elowen Stray:

Accounting for discrepancies?

Quillibrace:

Accounting for what remains unexplained given the ontology smuggled in at the start.

Blottisham:

Smuggled? Nothing was smuggled! We began with spacetime, matter, fields—

Quillibrace:

—precisely.

Elowen Stray:

So dark matter appears because relations are treated as things?

Quillibrace:

Yes. When relational effects are reified, whatever fails to fit must be added back in as substance.

Blottisham:

But galaxies rotate too fast! Lensing is stronger than expected!

Quillibrace:

Expected under which construal?

Elowen Stray:

Under one that assumes a fixed geometric background populated by objects.

Quillibrace:

Exactly.

Blottisham:

So dark matter isn’t a hidden substance lurking in halos?

Quillibrace:

It is a placeholder for relational regularities that refuse to be compressed into object-based bookkeeping.

Elowen Stray:

And dark energy?

Quillibrace:

The same debt, accumulated cosmologically.

Blottisham:

You mean the universe isn’t filled with a mysterious repulsive essence?

Quillibrace:

No more than space is filled with stretchiness.

Elowen Stray:

So acceleration is not driven by a thing…

Quillibrace:

…but by the failure of a background ontology to remain coherent at scale.

Blottisham:

This is outrageous. We have spent decades searching for particles!

Quillibrace:

And you may yet find them. But finding something does not retroactively justify the ontology that demanded it.

Elowen Stray:

So dark matter and dark energy are not wrong…

Quillibrace:

…but they are not fundamental.

Blottisham:

Then what are they, finally?

Quillibrace:

They are ontological debts—numbers written into equations to compensate for treating relations as if they were things moving in a container.

Elowen Stray:

And if we stop doing that?

Quillibrace:

The debts no longer appear in the same form.

Blottisham:

You are suggesting we rewrite the entire ledger.

Quillibrace:

Only the column headings.

Elowen Stray:

So the universe isn’t hiding most of itself from us…

Quillibrace:

…it is patiently refusing to confirm a mistake.

Blottisham:

I find this deeply unsettling.

Quillibrace:

That is because you are watching an ontology quietly fail.

Elowen Stray:

And also quietly teach us how to let it go.

(Blottisham stares at the chalkboard, now crowded with erased symbols. Elowen looks thoughtful, almost serene. Quillibrace closes the ledger and pours the last of the tea.)