This series began with a simple provocation:
What if the “quantum–relativity problem” is not a problem in physics, but an artefact of ontology?
Across these posts, we have dismantled several assumptions so deeply embedded in contemporary discourse that they rarely appear as assumptions at all:
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that reality must possess a single ontological substrate,
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that scale forms a ladder from small to large,
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that unification requires depth,
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that information is a conserved metaphysical substance,
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that inconsistency signals incompleteness of being,
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that a final theory must close the system.
None of these commitments are empirically mandated.
They are metaphysical inheritances.
1. What Has Been Replaced
We have not argued for fragmentation.
We have not argued that “anything goes.”
We have replaced substance with constraint.
We have replaced depth with structured potential.
We have replaced unification with coordination.
General relativity and quantum field theory are not rival descriptions of a hidden object.
They are constraint systems generating distinct instance spaces.
The task is not to discover the deeper thing beneath them.
It is to map the relations under which they can co-actualise.
2. The Shift in Ambition
The classical ambition of physics has been metaphysical integration:
The relational ambition is different:
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Articulate structured potentials.
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Identify invariants under transformation.
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Map compatibility conditions.
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Diagnose boundary failures.
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Reconfigure constraint where necessary.
This is not a retreat from rigour.
It is a reorientation of rigour.
3. Incompleteness Without Panic
Boundary phenomena — infinities, paradoxes, informational anxiety — need not be read as tears in the fabric of reality.
They are signals.
They mark the limits of coordination under a given cut.
No constraint system exhausts possibility.
No articulation closes the field.
Incompleteness is not an embarrassment.
It is the condition of ongoing articulation.
4. Relation Before Object
If there is a single principle underlying this series, it is this:
Relation precedes object.
Objects are nodes within structured constraint systems.
Information is defined relative to them.
Scale is a perspectival feature of them.
Unification is a special case of compatibility between them.
Once relation is primary, the metaphysical pressure toward finality relaxes.
Not because the world fragments.
But because the demand for a final frame dissolves.
5. What Becomes of the “Theory of Everything”?
Perhaps there will be no theory of everything.
Perhaps there will instead be:
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an expanding network of coordinated constraint systems,
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linked by structure-preserving mappings,
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open at their boundaries,
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generative at their points of strain.
The deepest theory would not describe what the world is made of.
It would describe how structured possibilities relate.
And that theory, too, would remain open.
Closing Line
Physics need not culminate in metaphysical closure.
It may instead participate in the ongoing evolution of possibility itself.
And that is not a failure.
It is far more interesting.
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