Relational Cuts: 6 Why Physics Needed This All Along

Returning to physics with relational clarity

In the preceding posts, we have constructed the architecture of relational ontology: systems as structured potentials, cuts as relational distinctions that actualise phenomena, instances as perspectival actualisations, meaning as the relational condition of intelligibility, and limits as constitutive features. The series now returns to physics itself to show why this ontology was always implicit in its practice.

Physics without representation

Modern physics repeatedly confronts situations where representational realism fails. Bohr, Heisenberg, and Wheeler showed that phenomena cannot be treated as pre-existing objects and that observation is constitutive. The relational ontology developed in this series clarifies why: physics does not need interpretation to operate correctly; it requires intelligibility, and intelligibility presupposes relational structure.

Reinterpreting familiar principles

Consider quantum measurement. Previously, it appeared mysterious that outcomes are actualised only upon measurement. Relational cuts make this intelligible: the system contains potentialities, and the measurement implements a cut that actualises a specific instance. Nothing is produced or created; the phenomenon is perspectival and relational.

Similarly, relativity’s dependence on frames of reference is not a limitation of theory but a manifestation of perspectival actuality. Every observation is constrained by relational boundaries, and this is precisely what allows consistent, repeatable phenomena to emerge.

The ontology physics presupposes

Physics presupposes:

• systems structured as potential,

• distinctions that actualise phenomena (cuts),

• perspectival instances,

• relationally constrained meaning,

• boundaries that define intelligibility.

Without these presuppositions, the practice of physics would be unintelligible. Experiments would have no coherence, equations would have no referent, and predictions would lack operational meaning.

Why this matters

This ontology does not correct physics or reinterpret its results. It explains why physics looks the way it does, why phenomena appear stable and intelligible, and why observation matters without invoking consciousness or external metaphysics.

Relational ontology situates physics within a broader conceptual landscape. It shows that the patterns observed in physics are not isolated facts about the world; they are manifestations of relational structures that make phenomena intelligible in the first place.

Structural payoff

The series closes the loop:

• The collapse of description in physics makes relational structure visible.

• Phenomena arise through cuts within systems.

• Actualisation is perspectival, and meaning is relational.

• Limits are constitutive, not accidental.

• Physics, by its own operation, already presupposes this ontology.

Relational Cuts provides a framework for understanding why physics works, why phenomena appear as they do, and how meaning is embedded in the practice of observation itself. It does not add anything to physics; it illuminates the structure that physics has always relied upon.

This completes the series. Readers who follow its logic can now see that physics, far from being a detached mirror of reality, is an arena in which relational structures, cuts, and perspectival actualisations are always at work, silently shaping the intelligibility of the world.