1. Two habits that quietly survive every revolution
Even after abandoning substance metaphysics, even after releasing the image of laws as commands, two habits tend to linger:
that explanation must ultimately be causal
that necessity must ultimately imply governance
These habits feel almost irresistible. They give explanation its sense of depth and necessity its sense of force. But from the standpoint of relational ontology, both habits represent a final overreach — a reintroduction of metaphysical machinery where structural coherence already suffices.
What follows is an attempt to loosen both habits at once.
2. Why explanation is so easily confused with causation
In everyday reasoning, explanation and causation are entangled. To explain why something happened is usually to identify what produced it.
Physics inherits this intuition, then refines it — but rarely abandons it. Causes become interactions, fields, mechanisms, or dynamical laws. Yet the underlying picture remains: events occur because something makes them occur.
From a relational perspective, this picture is already misaligned with how theories actually function.
3. Explanation as structural articulation
Relational ontology proposes a different account. To explain a phenomenon is not to locate its causal origin, but to articulate the system of relations under which it becomes intelligible at all.
An explanation succeeds when it shows:
what distinctions must be in place
what relations must hold
what constraints must remain fixed
so that the phenomenon can be recognised as an instantiation of a structured potential.
Nothing needs to be produced by anything else. What matters is that the phenomenon can be situated.
4. Physics already works this way
Consider once again the role of invariants. When relativity explains why no signal exceeds c, it does not point to a causal process that slows signals down. It shows that allowing such variation would destroy the coherence of the spacetime system itself.
The explanation is not dynamical. It is architectural.
Likewise, conservation laws do not explain events by causing quantities to be conserved. They articulate the relational structure within which certain quantities retain identity across transformations.
Physics has long relied on explanation without causation — while continuing to speak as if causes were doing the work.
5. From explanation to necessity
Once explanation is released from causation, necessity must also be rethought.
Necessity is often taken to mean that the world has no choice. From this view, laws compel behaviour and violations are metaphysically impossible.
But this imports governance through the back door.
6. Necessity as internal non-negotiability
From a relational standpoint, necessity arises within systems, not over them.
A relation is necessary not because it is enforced, but because removing it would dissolve the system that makes the relation intelligible in the first place.
There is no external prohibition. There is simply nothing left to describe.
This is why invariants feel unavoidable. They are not rules the universe must obey; they are conditions without which the system ceases to be a system.
7. Why governance feels tempting
Governance provides a comforting picture:
necessity appears absolute rather than conditional
explanation appears final rather than situated
structure appears to reside in the world rather than in our systems of construal
But this comfort comes at a price. It obscures the distinction between structured potential and actualised phenomenon, and reintroduces metaphysical force where only relational coherence is required.
8. What remains once both habits are released
When explanation no longer depends on causation, and necessity no longer implies governance, something important becomes visible.
Physics does not tell us why the world behaves. It tells us under what relational conditions behaviour can be described coherently at all.
This does not weaken explanation. It clarifies its scope.
9. A final orientation
Explanation without causation is not emptier explanation.
Necessity without governance is not weaker necessity.
Both are sharper.
They mark the point at which physics ceases to be mythology about how the universe is compelled to behave, and becomes what it has quietly been all along: a disciplined practice of articulating the constraints under which meaning can remain stable across perspectives.