Physics Without Totality: 4 Locality Without Metaphysics

We arrive, at last, not at an ending, but at a perspective: one that does not require global integration, totalising narratives, or God’s-eye knowledge. Physics, properly read, is not a manual for omniscience — it is a lesson in locality, relational discipline, and the ethics of actualisation.

Horizons as Invitations, Not Barriers

Event horizons, singularities, and temporal boundaries have haunted thought because we mistook them for breakdowns. From a relational vantage, they are not gaps in reality; they are limits of description. They mark where integrative ambition exceeds local possibility, and in doing so, they insist we attend to the actual, not the hypothetical. The universe does not pause; it continues, frame by frame, cut by cut, horizon by horizon.

Locality Freed from Metaphysics

This is the central insight: locality does not imply anti-realism, nor is it an instrumentalist dodge. Local actualisations are real, observable, and consequential. They are not fragments of a fractured totality; they are coherent instantiations that obey relational discipline. Physics teaches us to respect the primacy of local interaction, the legitimacy of perspectival knowledge, and the necessity of relational grounding.

In other words: we can study, model, and inhabit the world without ever demanding a metaphysical “whole.” Totality is an artefact; locality is the true ontology of lived and observed phenomena.

Worldhood and Inhabitation

By relinquishing the fantasy of total perspective, we also reclaim our orientation within the world. Worldhood is not global; it is distributed, perspectival, relational. Inhabitation is an active negotiation with local constraints, actualisations, and horizons. To live in the universe is to navigate its relational network — to act, observe, and interpret without ever expecting absolute oversight.

The Relational Takeaway

Physics, in its finest moments, reminds us of the elegance of constraints. Horizons, frames, and event limits are not failures; they are the rules of relational engagement. By embracing locality without metaphysical pretension, we:

• Accept that events are perspectival actualisations.

• Recognise that singularities and paradoxes are artefacts of overreach.

• Honour the integrity of local interaction.

• Reclaim a grounded, inhabitable sense of worldhood.

In short: the universe never fails; we fail when we demand too much from it. To live relationally is to live with discipline, attentiveness, and orientation — to inhabit a cosmos defined not by totality, but by the actual, here, now, and local.