The previous posts have moved carefully through familiar terrain:
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Schrödinger’s cat and the confusion of superposition with co-actuality.
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The inflation of potential into substance across major interpretations.
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The pressure of interference and Bell-type results.
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The accusation of instrumentalism.
Each step addressed a specific problem.
This final post steps back.
The claim is no longer merely that quantum paradoxes dissolve under a particular distinction.
The claim is stronger:
Quantum mechanics provides a case study in the explanatory power of relational ontology itself.
1. The Structural Misstep
The recurring pattern across quantum interpretation was this:
A formal articulation of structured potential was mistaken for a description of ontic instance.
From that conflation followed:
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branching worlds,
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spontaneous collapses,
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hidden substrates,
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metaphysical nonlocality.
Each proposal was internally coherent.
Each was motivated by a desire to stabilise realism.
Each arose from the same structural misstep.
The theory of possible instances was treated as if it were already an instance.
The crisis was grammatical before it was metaphysical.
2. Relational Ontology’s Core Distinction
Relational ontology begins from a disciplined differentiation:
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System: structured potential — a theory of possible instances.
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Cut: the perspectival shift from potential to event.
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Instance: actualised phenomenon.
This is not an interpretative overlay imposed upon physics.
It is a clarification of levels already implicit in the formalism.
Quantum mechanics articulates structured relational potential with extraordinary precision.
Actual experiments yield singular outcomes.
The difficulty emerged when these levels were collapsed into one.
Relational ontology restores the distinction.
And in doing so, it restores coherence.
3. What the Quantum Episode Reveals
Seen through this lens, the quantum episode reveals three deeper insights.
(a) Potential Is Not Vague
Potential is structured.
Interference phenomena demonstrate that the space of possible instances carries phase relations and constraints that shape actualisation.
This is not epistemic ignorance.
It is articulated relational form.
(b) Potential Is Irreducibly Relational
Bell-type results show that structured potential cannot be decomposed into independent local subpotentials with pre-actualised values.
Possibility is relational all the way down.
But relational does not mean co-actual.
It means that what may be actualised is structured by relations internal to potential itself.
(c) Actualisation Is Singular
Every experimental run yields a definite outcome.
Not a branching multiplicity.
Not a half-collapsed cloud.
A singular instance.
Relational ontology does not need to explain how many actualities coexist.
It needs only to clarify how structured potential relates to singular actualisation.
4. The Explanatory Gain
What has been gained?
Not a new interpretation among others.
Not a modified equation.
What has been gained is explanatory discipline.
Instead of multiplying ontology in response to paradox, relational ontology asks:
At which level does the claimed difficulty arise?
In the quantum case, the answer is consistent:
The difficulty arises when the grammar of potential is forced into the grammar of instance.
Once the distinction is maintained, the pressure to inflate disappears.
The formalism remains intact.
The experiments remain decisive.
The metaphysical excess recedes.
5. Beyond Quantum Mechanics
This is why the episode matters.
It is not merely about physics.
It is about how modern thought handles possibility.
Again and again, we oscillate between two extremes:
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Reducing possibility to hidden actuality.
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Elevating possibility into co-actual multiplicity.
Both assume that only instance truly exists.
Relational ontology refuses that assumption.
Potential is real.
Instance is real.
They are not the same.
Quantum mechanics did not overthrow realism.
It exposed the inadequacy of a realism confined to fully actualised substance.
6. The Evolution of Possibility
Placed within the broader arc of The Becoming of Possibility, the lesson becomes clearer.
The evolution of possibility is not the gradual filling in of a pre-existing container of actuality.
It is the ongoing articulation of structured potentials within which new instances may be actualised.
Quantum mechanics is one domain in which this structure became visible with unusual force.
The shock it produced was not because reality became irrational.
It was because the structure of possibility exceeded classical grammar.
Relational ontology does not tame that excess.
It gives it a coherent place.
7. The Quiet Conclusion
There was never a half-dead cat.
There was never a branching infinity forced upon us by experiment.
There was never a metaphysical collapse exploding inside nature.
There was structured relational potential.
There was singular actualisation.
There was a failure to distinguish the two.
Quantum mechanics did not demand ontological extravagance.
It demanded precision about levels.
That precision is what relational ontology supplies.
And in supplying it, the crisis resolves — not by denying the strangeness of quantum theory, but by recognising that the strangeness lay in our conflation of potential and instance.
The revolution was not that reality is fragmented.
It was that possibility is structured.
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