Quantum Cuts: 1 Quantum Structuralism — The New Object Myth

We live in an age where quantum mechanics has been enlisted as a philosophical sledgehammer. One of the more seductive claims circulating in popular philosophy — exemplified by George Webster’s recent article on Institute of Art and Ideas — is that the quantum world reveals reality is made of relations, not objects. At first glance, this sounds like a revolutionary step away from classical metaphysics. But is it?

Quantum Structuralism, as we might call it, makes three interlocking claims:

1. Objects are not fundamental. Electrons, tables, planets — these are mere placeholders in our everyday understanding, not the building blocks of reality.

2. Relations are primary. What truly exists, the argument goes, is the network of interactions, entanglements, and structural constraints that govern behaviour.

3. Structure replaces substance. Quantum states, symmetries, and statistical patterns are what really “exist” in the ontological sense.

This framework feels, at a glance, like it resonates with relational thinking. After all, if objects dissolve into relations, haven’t we destabilised naive object realism? Haven’t we finally taken the first step toward understanding the world as fundamentally relational?

Yes — but only partially.

Quantum Structuralism may replace “object” with “structure,” but it leaves in place a silent assumption: something exists independently, to which these relations attach. It assumes a quantum substrate, a mind-independent world of particles and waves, which structure merely arranges. It retains the metaphysical scaffolding it claims to overthrow — the object is gone, but the “world-as-it-is” remains.

Relational ontology makes a sharper cut. It does not merely swap objects for structures. Instead, it reframes the very conditions under which reality becomes meaningful:

• Systems are theories of potential instances.

• Instantiation is a perspectival cut, not a revelation of a hidden substrate.

• Phenomena are construed experiences, not windows into a pre-existing quantum world.

• Relations are not “things” at all, but emergent aspects of construal.

In short: Quantum Structuralism destabilises the object myth. Relational ontology dissolves the substrate myth. One hints at relationality; the other redefines reality from the ground up.

In the next post, we will dissect the subtle ways Quantum Structuralism still sneaks back in classical assumptions, and show why a fully relational approach offers conceptual clarity that physics alone cannot.