Dual Locations

Popular accounts of quantum mechanics often say that “the system evolves in Hilbert space” while “measurements occur in physical space.” This framing produces what a Nature article (here) calls a “duality of location”: as though there were two distinct arenas — one mathematical, one physical — that must somehow remain in perfect synchrony.

But this is a category error. Hilbert space is not a second “place” alongside physical space. It is a system of potential — a structured theory of possible states. To spatialise it, to imagine quantum processes “happening” inside Hilbert space, is to reify representation as reality.

The effect of this metaphor is subtle but profound. It turns a relational model into a parallel universe. It makes the theory itself into a second stage on which events unfold. And then, having invented this unnecessary duplication, physicists are forced to marvel at the miraculous synchronisation between the two.

From a relational perspective, there is no “where” of Hilbert space. What it encodes is potential, not phenomenon. Events are not “located” in Hilbert space but actualised through construal: cuts in the fabric of possibility that manifest as phenomena. To treat Hilbert space as a place is to mistake the map for the territory — worse, to mistake the theory of maps for a second territory.

The problem is not that Hilbert space and physical space are hard to reconcile. The problem is the assumption that Hilbert space is a “space” at all. It is not an arena, but a model of relational potential. Remove the misplaced spatial metaphor, and the so-called “duality of location” dissolves.

Three Masks of the Same Error: A Retrospective

Over the past three posts, I have set out three short critiques:

• Against Quantum Weirdness — the trap of treating quantum as a deviation from a “normal” classical baseline.

• Against the God’s-Eye View — the illusion that physics can speak from nowhere, erasing the reflexive role of construal.

• Against Information as Ontology — the confusion of symbolic abstraction with material substance.

Each of these may look like a separate problem. Yet retrospectively, a deeper coherence emerges: they are three masks of the same underlying error.

That error is the reification of construal. Each metaphor takes a symbolic architecture — “weirdness,” “objectivity,” “information” — and instals it as if it were the very fabric of reality. The symbolic cut becomes the ground, the construal disappears into the claim, and what is reflexively constituted is presented as self-evidently given.

In each case, the effect is the same:

• The normalisation of one symbolic order (classical mechanics, detached objectivity, digital abstraction).

• The erasure of reflexive alignment (the social and symbolic labour that makes phenomena intelligible).

• The projection of a metaphenomenal claim as if it were empirical discovery.

Seen this way, the three critiques together are not a miscellany but a systematic exposure of category errors at the heart of physics discourse. They show how quickly language about quantum phenomena slides into metaphysics without acknowledgment, and how urgently we need to keep ontological distinctions clear.

This is not to dismiss physics. On the contrary: it is to honour it by refusing to saddle it with confused metaphors that obscure rather than clarify. Physics has the power to reveal relational patterns of extraordinary depth — but only if we resist the temptation to let its symbolic scaffolding masquerade as reality itself.

Information as Ontology

A fashionable claim in physics and philosophy alike is that “the universe is made of information.” On the surface, this sounds profound: it promises to unify matter, energy, and mind under a single principle. But beneath the rhetoric lies a deep ontological confusion.

Information is not substance. It is an abstraction, a measure of symbolic difference, a way of modelling how systems can be distinguished and related. To treat it as the essence of reality is to collapse semiotic categories into physical ones — to mistake the grammar of construal for the fabric of being.

Relationally, information belongs to the symbolic order. It encodes potential distinctions, possibilities of meaning and alignment. Matter, by contrast, belongs to the order of instantiation: construal cutting into potential, producing phenomena. To claim that matter is information is not an elegant unification but a category error: it fuses the symbolic with the material, as if a map could turn into the terrain.

The seductive appeal of “information as ontology” rests on its metaphoric drift. The language of “bits” and “codes” suggests a hidden digital substrate, a cosmic computer churning out existence. But what this metaphor erases is precisely the reflexive condition that makes information possible: construal, interpretation, alignment. Information has no independent existence apart from symbolic systems that can encode, decode, and actualise it.

Thus, the claim that “the universe is information” is not a discovery but a metaphenomenal projection — the elevation of an abstraction to metaphysical principle. It reduces the richness of symbolic reflexivity to a flat ontology where meaning and matter are indistinguishable.

To resist this confusion is not to deny the power of information as a modelling tool. It is to keep clear the ontological distinction between symbolic potential and material instantiation. The universe is not made of information. Rather, information is one of the ways symbolic systems make the universe intelligible.

The God’s-Eye View

Modern physics often imagines itself as gazing upon the universe from nowhere — as if it could peel back appearances and access reality as it truly is. This posture is what I call the God’s-eye view: the assumption that science speaks from a privileged, non-situated vantage point outside the conditions of its own meaning-making.

At first glance, this stance appears as a mark of rigour: to strip away bias, subjectivity, or distortion, leaving only the objective truth of the cosmos. But the move is ontologically treacherous. By erasing the reflexive role of construal, cut, and alignment in constituting phenomena, it mistakes symbolic architectures for transparent windows onto reality.

Relationally, there is no view from nowhere. Every phenomenon arises as an event of construal: a cut across potential, an instantiation of meaning, a situated alignment of observer and system. To claim otherwise is to collapse second-order claims (about the symbolic systems through which we know) into first-order claims (about the phenomena themselves). This confusion allows metaphenomenal assertions to masquerade as empirical descriptions.

For example, when physics declares that the universe consists of fields, particles, or information, it is not merely reporting what is “there.” It is enacting a symbolic cut that produces those categories as phenomena. To treat this enactment as transparent access to reality is to deny the constitutive role of construal, reducing reflexivity to illusion.

The God’s-eye view thus operates as an ontological sleight of hand. It hides the conditions of possibility for knowledge, smuggling in metaphysical certainty under the guise of neutrality. But once we see that meaning is not peeled away but produced through construal, the illusion dissolves.

There is no standpoint beyond construal, no pure mirror of nature. There are only symbolic architectures through which we make the real intelligible. The task is not to escape them but to reckon with their reflexive power — to see that physics, like any other discourse, is not revelation from nowhere but a social alignment of meaning and matter.

Quantum Weirdness

Few tropes in popular science are as persistent as the idea that quantum physics is “weird.” Journalists revel in it, popularisers perform it, and even physicists themselves sometimes lean on the term when confronted with the difficulty of explaining their subject. But this reliance on weirdness as a descriptor does more than colour public perception — it installs a particular metaphysical bias at the heart of how we talk about quantum theory.

To call something “weird” presupposes a baseline of “normal.” That baseline, of course, is classical physics: the world of solid objects, continuous motion, and causal chains. By casting classical physics as the natural frame and quantum physics as its strange deviation, the discourse treats the former as ontological truth and the latter as an inexplicable anomaly.

Relationally, however, both classical and quantum construals are symbolic architectures. They are systems of meaning that carve possibility space in different ways. The so-called “weirdness” of quantum mechanics only arises if one assumes that the classical construal is reality itself, rather than one symbolic account among others. In this sense, weirdness is not a property of quantum phenomena at all — it is an artefact of the comparative framing.

The effect of the weirdness trope is thus to mystify. It distracts from the fact that what is at stake is not a clash between normality and deviation, but between two symbolic architectures of reality, each structuring relational potential in distinct ways. To insist that quantum mechanics is “weird” is to misrecognise the nature of both — to naturalise one and exoticise the other, while ignoring that both are reflexive construals.

Quantum mechanics does not demand that we resign ourselves to paradox or accept that “reality is just strange.” It demands that we interrogate how construal itself generates phenomena, and how symbolic architectures shape the horizons of the possible. The problem is not quantum weirdness, but the epistemological comfort of pretending that classical physics was ever “normal” in the first place.

The Wavefunction as a Physical Wave

The wavefunction is often drawn as though it were a real, rippling wave spread across space: a crest here, a trough there, like water undulating on a pond. This makes the wavefunction into a thing — a literal oscillation that flows, swells, and collapses. But this picture is a category mistake.

The wavefunction is not a physical wave but a symbolic form. It encodes the dispositional structure of a system’s potential relations, not an oscillation of stuff. Its amplitudes are not crests of matter but intensities of possibility: ways in which a system could actualise when aligned with other systems. To mistake this for a material wave is to confuse probability with presence, representation with reality.

By treating the wavefunction as an undulating entity, physics inherits a cartoon that it then feels compelled to destroy — hence the obsession with “collapse,” as though a real wave must vanish into nothing. Relationally, no such drama is needed: the wavefunction is a calculus of potential, a grammar of possibility. What ripples here is not matter but meaning — the structure of how a system might be, not the ghost of how it is.

Quantum Superposition as “Being in Two Places at Once”

Popular accounts love to dramatise superposition as a particle “existing in two places at the same time.” The image is irresistible: an electron perched in two chairs, Schrödinger’s cat both alive and dead. But this is a theatrical metaphor, not an ontology. It imagines substance duplicated, as though matter could be stretched and doubled across incompatible states.

Relationally, superposition is not a doubling of being but a structuring of potential. It is a way of encoding the dispositions a system has to actualise under different relational alignments. To construe it as “being in two places” is to mistake possibility for presence, potential for substance. The effect is to inflate a mathematical representation into a ghostly metaphysics, where objects are fractured into spectral copies until measurement swoops in to unify them.

Superposition does not mean two-fold existence; it means patterned possibility. To treat it otherwise is to project anthropomorphic anxieties onto physics and obscure what is most radical in the theory: that actuality is always perspectival, cut from relational potential — not the sum of ghostly doubles hiding in the dark.

The Idea of Fundamental Building Blocks

Physics often casts itself as a search for the ultimate Lego bricks of reality: indivisible particles, strings, or quanta out of which everything else is constructed. The metaphor of “building blocks” suggests solidity, discreteness, and a bottom layer beneath all others. Yet every time physics thinks it has found the final bricks, those bricks dissolve — atoms into protons and neutrons, protons into quarks, quarks into fields, fields into… what next? The metaphor drives a fruitless archaeology of reality, always digging deeper for a foundation that recedes with every discovery.

Relational ontology takes another path: what is fundamental is not a block but a relation, not a particle but a potential for interaction. There is no bedrock of indivisible things; there is only patterned connectivity. To speak of “building blocks” is to import the wrong image: of masonry stacked into walls, rather than a web of tensions, alignments, and reflexive actualisations. The world is not built; it is woven. And this shift from bricks to bonds reveals why the search for a bottom fails: reality does not sit on a foundation — it hangs together through relation.

The “Cosmic Horizon” as a Wall

Popular science often describes the observable universe as bounded by a “cosmic horizon,” as if a literal wall of light or space lies at the edge of what we can see. The metaphor is appealing: it makes the abstract concept tangible, giving readers a sense of a boundary just out of reach.

Yet this image is misleading. The horizon is not a wall; it is a description of limits in relational access. It marks where light from distant regions has not yet reached us, not where the universe ends. Treating it as a physical barrier smuggles in a container metaphor, implying that beyond the wall lies something fundamentally separate or inaccessible.

Relationally, the horizon is about observational constraints, not cosmic architecture. It is a property of our interaction with the universe, dependent on the relative positions, velocities, and histories of observers and events. Nothing in the cosmos stops at the horizon; it simply lies outside the network of relations we can currently probe.

The cosmic horizon is not a wall; it is a limit of relational reach — a description of what can be known, not a barrier in reality.

Dark Matter as Hidden Stuff

Dark matter is often depicted as a mysterious, invisible substance pervading the cosmos, silently tugging at galaxies with its unseen mass. The metaphor is seductive: it presents dark matter as a hidden object, a ghostly component of the universe waiting to be discovered.

But this framing is misleading. It treats matter as a collection of things with independent existence, and assumes the gravitational anomalies we observe must correspond to invisible “stuff.” Relationally, dark matter is not a substance; it is a manifestation of relational patterns — the way mass, energy, and spacetime interact across the cosmos. What appears as extra mass is a feature of relational constraints, not a hidden object lurking in space.

Thinking of dark matter as “stuff” misleads us into seeking particles that may never be found, while obscuring the deeper insight: it is the network of relations, not additional entities, that shapes galactic motion. The universe is not secretly loaded with unseen matter; it is simply relationally richer than our naïve models suggest.

Dark matter does not hide; it relates — a pattern of interaction, not a ghostly substance.

The Singularity

Singularities are often described as points of infinite density and curvature at the heart of black holes or at the origin of the Big Bang. Popular explanations speak of them as physical objects where the laws of physics break down, mysterious cores that swallow all meaning. The imagery is dramatic, almost cinematic.

Yet the metaphor misleads. Infinities are not things; they are signals that our models are being pushed beyond their domain of applicability. A singularity is not a “thing” in space, but a limit of description: a point at which our measures of relational potential fail to capture what is happening. To treat it as an object is to mistake a map for the territory.

Relationally, what matters is not the singularity itself, but the web of relations that leads up to it. Black holes, for example, are not swallowed mysteries but regions of extreme relational constraint, where the configuration of spacetime and matter produces phenomena that challenge our familiar measures.

The language of “singularity” seduces us with drama but conceals ontology. There is no point where reality ceases; there are only extremes in relational pattern that our current concepts cannot fully resolve.

Singularities are not objects; they are thresholds of description — markers of relational intensity, not voids in existence.

The Big Bang as a Point Explosion

Popular accounts of cosmology often describe the Big Bang as a singular explosion from a tiny point, sending matter outward into empty space. The image is vivid: fireball, blast wave, a cosmic bomb igniting the universe. It is easy to imagine and emotionally gripping.

But the metaphor carries a hidden assumption: a pre-existing container and a central point from which everything radiates. Relationally, the universe does not explode from a point. Every point participates in the unfolding; there is no centre, no outside to expand into. The Big Bang is not an event in space, but a reconfiguration of relational potential across all of space simultaneously.

To picture a central explosion is to revert to Newtonian thinking: space as stage, matter as actors, and time as a uniform clock. In truth, expansion is relational. Distances increase because the relations between regions change, not because they are propelled outward by some primordial blast.

The Big Bang did not explode; it unfolded — a global shift in relational potential, without centre or container.

Dark Energy as a Force

Cosmologists often describe dark energy as a mysterious force pushing galaxies apart, accelerating the expansion of the universe. Textbooks and popular accounts depict it as a ghostly hand, invisible yet omnipresent, acting on matter across cosmic distances. The metaphor is vivid, almost cinematic: dark energy is the universe’s secret engine, tugging at the stars.

Yet this framing is deeply misleading. It treats dark energy as a thing exerting pressure in space, as if the cosmos were a stage and the energy a player on it. Relationally, there is no external agent “pushing” galaxies. Expansion is not driven by a substance; it is a re-scaling of relational metrics, a shift in the pattern of distances and potentialities that define cosmic structure.

Calling it a force suggests agency and substance, obscuring the relational dynamics at play. Dark energy is not something separate from the universe, acting upon it; it is a feature of the evolving relationships between phenomena, not a hidden hand manipulating objects.

Metaphors of pushing and pulling seduce us into a Newtonian worldview where space is a container and matter are objects floating within it. In truth, the universe does not accelerate because it is being acted upon; it accelerates because the relational fabric itself changes.

Dark energy does not push; it manifests — the unfolding of relations, not the motion of a secret agent.

Black Hole Information Loss

Black holes are often framed as cosmic cul-de-sacs, places where matter and energy vanish, and with them, the information they carry. Popular science stories speak of a “paradox”: if a black hole evaporates via Hawking radiation, does the information about everything it swallowed disappear forever? It is a compelling image: the universe swallowing secrets into a pit from which nothing can escape.

Yet this metaphor misleads. It assumes information is a thing — a substance that can be trapped or lost. It also treats spacetime as a container in which events happen, with an outside observer measuring what enters and leaves. Relationally, there is no outside vantage; the universe has no external ledger against which information is counted. Information is not a static object, but a measure of relational potential, a way in which possibilities can be actualised or constrained.

What is called “loss” is not destruction but transformation. As matter and energy interact near a black hole, relational patterns reconfigure. Hawking radiation does not erase the universe’s relational potential; it shifts it. Information is never outside the network, never lost, because it was never a discrete thing to be confined.

The story of disappearing information relies on a substance metaphor and an external frame. Stripped of these illusions, black holes are not mysterious prisons of secrets, but regions of intense relational reconfiguration.

Information is not swallowed; it is reframed — a transformation of relations, not a vanishing act.

The Big Crunch

Popular cosmology sometimes suggests a dramatic “Big Crunch”: the universe, after expanding, will reverse course, collapse in on itself, and end in a singularity. Textbooks and popular media describe it as a cosmic implosion, a mirror image of the Big Bang, as if the universe were a tide rising and then retreating into some absolute sink. The image is cinematic, easy to visualise, and emotionally compelling.

Yet the Big Crunch metaphor is misleading. It assumes the universe is an object capable of turning around in space, a container whose boundaries can move inward. It imagines expansion and contraction as literal motions in a pre-existing arena. Relationally, there is no “space” into which the cosmos expands or contracts; there is only the network of relations between phenomena, unfolding in concert.

Collapse, in this sense, is not a literal event. It is a reconfiguration of relational potential, a shift in the patterns that define how distances, durations, and interactions are measured. What appears as contraction is merely a different relational metric emerging from the system itself.

The Big Crunch is a story of drama, but not of ontology. The universe does not reverse like a film reel. It reshapes its relational fabric, but it never “falls” into anything outside itself. The metaphor of implosion seduces with imagery but blinds us to the relational nature of cosmic change.

The universe does not crunch; it realigns — a web of relations, never a thing collapsing.

The Heat Death of the Universe

Popular accounts of cosmology often warn that the universe is hurtling toward an inevitable “heat death.” Entropy rises, energy spreads thin, stars burn out, and in the far, far future, all will be cold, dark, and lifeless. It is a haunting image: the cosmos as a dying fire, fading to nothing. One can almost feel the stillness creeping across the galaxies.

Yet the metaphor of heat death carries a subtle, and ultimately misleading, ontological assumption. It treats the universe as a container of energy, a vessel in which resources can run out. Entropy is spoken of as a depletion, as if the cosmos were a tank being drained, a reservoir approaching zero. This frames time linearly and matter as a set of consumables, and it projects the language of thermodynamics into an ontology it cannot fully sustain.

Relationally, entropy is not a law of decay in some absolute container. It is a measure of relational potential — of the ways matter, energy, and events can be organised. What we call “heat death” is not a final cessation imposed from outside, but a phase in which certain relational patterns are no longer available. It is a change in the landscape of possibility, not an extinction writ across the universe.

The problem is that metaphors of “death” and “running out” mislead us into thinking the universe is a thing that can die. In relational terms, the universe does not die, because it is not a static object with finite stores. It is a dynamic network of relations whose potential reconfigures continually. What physics measures as entropy does not herald doom; it maps the shifting constraints of what can be actualised.

The universe will not die. It will continue to unfold as relation, not as a reservoir emptied, and the heat death metaphor collapses under the weight of its own literalism.

The Universe Expanding into Nothing

The most enduring image of modern cosmology is that of the expanding balloon. Dots drawn on its surface drift apart as the balloon swells. This is meant to suggest that galaxies recede from one another, not because they are moving through space, but because space itself is stretching. At first glance, it seems an elegant metaphor: intuitive, even charming. But beneath its appeal lies a trap.

The metaphor smuggles in a background that is not there. The balloon expands into something: the surrounding air, the room that contains it. Even when physicists insist this is not what they mean—that the universe expands into nothing—the metaphor already betrays them. The very act of picturing expansion requires a container. The background seeps in unbidden.

This is not a minor problem. It reintroduces, by sleight of hand, the very ontology relational thinking rejects: space as a pre-existing stage, empty and waiting to be filled. The universe, in this picture, is an object floating in a void. But if we follow relational ontology, no such backdrop exists. Space is not a receptacle. It is not there to be stretched or occupied. It is nothing over and above the relations themselves.

Expansion, then, is not a swelling into the void. It is a re-scaling of relations internal to the system. The “distance” between galaxies increases because the metric of their relation shifts. There is no outside, no beyond, no invisible container. The metaphor misleads precisely because it tempts us to imagine one.

The problem with “expanding into nothing” is not just conceptual sloppiness; it is metaphysical regression. It drags us back to a Newtonian stage-play where the set exists before the actors arrive. Better to see expansion for what it is: a transformation of relational possibility, not a growth into emptiness.

The balloon metaphor is enchanting—but every time we picture it, we picture the wrong thing.

Information as Substance

In the age of digital metaphors, “information” is often treated as if it were a physical stuff — a fluid that flows, a commodity that can be packaged, transported, and stored. We hear of “bits” as the new atoms, as though information were the most basic material of reality.

But this is a profound category mistake. Information is not a substance at all, but a relation. It is not something that exists “in” the world like a fluid, but something that comes into being through construal: a way of aligning systemic potential with symbolic instance.

To speak of “information flowing” between particles or across spacetime is to project the metaphor of plumbing onto the ontology of meaning. Information is not transmitted; it is construed. It does not flow; it emerges when patterns are cut from potential and recognised as meaningful.

When physicists reify information as a substance — to be “stored” in black holes or “erased” in entropy — they obscure the relational nature of meaning itself. Information does not belong to matter as a secret ingredient. It belongs to construal, to the symbolic alignment through which matter itself becomes meaningful.

The metaphor of substance blinds us to this, suggesting that the world traffics in information independently of the symbolic. But information is not what the world has. It is what we make when we construe.

Quantum Jumps

The image of the “quantum jump” is one of the most misleading metaphors in modern physics. It conjures a picture of electrons vaulting across gulfs of space, as though subatomic particles were tiny acrobats leaping between planets. This is a residue of classical thinking, which insists on imagining change as motion through space and time.

But what quantum mechanics actually models is not a leap through a background, but a change in relational possibility. When we speak of an electron “jumping” from one orbital to another, nothing is traversed. No gap is crossed. Instead, what shifts is the configuration of potential — a re-structuring of systemic possibility.

Calling this a “jump” traps us in a spatialised metaphor, as if the atom were a miniature solar system and electrons were just impatient planets. What’s at stake, however, is not movement across distance but a perspectival cut: the actualisation of one relational pattern out of many.

To cling to the image of a jump is to miss the ontology that quantum mechanics reveals: not objects vaulting through void, but systemic potentials shifting into instance.

The Multiverse as Parallel Worlds

The multiverse is often imagined as literal parallel worlds branching out. Relationally, what these theories describe is a space of potentialities, not a collection of real, separate universes. Treating them as worlds encourages substance-based intuition, making potentialities appear as concrete objects. Reality is actualised relationally here and now, not multiplied into hypothetical “places” elsewhere.

Entanglement as Instant Messaging

Entanglement is sometimes metaphorically described as “instant messaging across space.” This is misleading: nothing is sent. Relationally, entangled states co-actualise correlations across a system of potentialities. There is no signal, no transmission — only the joint actualisation of relational constraints. Thinking of it as messaging fosters classical intuitions, obscuring the relational, nonlocal nature of quantum reality.

Time as a River

Time is often spoken of as a flowing river, carrying events along. This is a metaphor, and a misleading one. Time is not a substance that moves, nor a background flow. It is a relational ordering of actualisations, emergent from the sequences of events themselves. Imagining it as a river encourages the illusion of an external medium carrying reality along, rather than reality unfolding relationally.

Virtual Particles as Real Entities

Virtual particles are sometimes described as ephemeral objects popping in and out of existence. Relationally, these are mathematical tools for tracking interactions, not actual entities. Imagining them as real reinforces substance-based thinking and distracts from the patterned relational dynamics they represent. They are bookkeeping devices, not ghosts.

The Photon as a Tiny Bullet

Photons are often depicted as little bullets shooting through space. This metaphor is deeply misleading. A photon is a pattern of potential actualisation, not a tiny solid object. Its “path” is defined relationally: how it interacts with matter, fields, and measurement devices. Thinking of photons as bullets obscures interference, superposition, and entanglement — the relational character of light itself.

Quantum Tunnelling as a “Particle Escape”

Quantum tunnelling is often described as a particle “magically escaping” a barrier. This language reinforces a mechanistic, substance-based picture. Relationally, tunnelling is an instantiation of potential across relational constraints. The “barrier” is not a wall to be escaped; it is part of the network of potentialities shaping actualisation. No magic, no violation — just the natural unfolding of relational possibilities.

Absolute Simultaneity

Texts often describe events as occurring “at the same time” across space, implying a universal clock. Relationally, simultaneity is not absolute — it is defined only within a network of interactions and reference frames. Treating it as universal encourages a Newtonian mindset that obscures relativistic insights: time is a relational ordering, not a pre-existing grid. Reality unfolds in relational sequences, not in simultaneity stamped on the cosmos.

Gravitational Curvature as a Bend in a Grid

General relativity is often illustrated as a stretched fabric with objects “bending” it. This is visually effective but ontologically misleading. Space is not a material sheet, and gravity is not a force pushing objects along slopes. Curvature is a description of relational constraints between events, not a physical deformation. To think of it as a bend reinforces Newtonian intuition and obscures the subtle relational geometry that defines the movement of matter and light.

The Speed-of-Light Barrier as a Wall

It is common to speak of the speed of light as a barrier, a wall that nothing can cross. While correct operationally, this metaphor is misleading ontologically. The speed of light is a constraint on the actualisation of relational potential across events, not a physical wall blocking entities. Framing it as a wall implies substance-like resistance, encouraging mechanistic intuitions. Reality does not “bounce” off the speed limit; it organises itself relationally within constraints, and the light-speed “limit” is a property of these relational structures.

Spacetime as a Container

Spacetime is frequently imagined as a four-dimensional container in which events are placed. This metaphor subtly imposes a Newtonian frame on relativistic phenomena. In relational terms, spacetime is not a container but a network of relations among events. Points in spacetime do not exist independently; distances, intervals, and curvature are measures of relational actualisation, not coordinates in a pre-existing stage. Thinking of spacetime as a container encourages reification of abstract structures, hiding the dynamic, relational nature of the universe itself.

Quantum Randomness as Chaos

Quantum mechanics is often described as “inherently random,” implying a universe governed by chaos at its core. This is misleading. Relationally, what appears as randomness is the actualisation of potential constrained by relational systems. Probabilities do not reflect disorder; they encode structured potentialities, patterns awaiting instantiation. Calling this randomness invites a mechanistic or mystical misreading: either pure unpredictability or unknowable chaos. In reality, quantum events are coherent relational outcomes, not dice tossed by an indifferent cosmos.

Particle-Wave Duality as a Literal Duality

Textbooks often describe quantum entities as “sometimes particles, sometimes waves,” suggesting a literal duality in nature. But this framing misleads. Electrons, photons, and other quanta are not dual objects; they are instantiations of relational potential whose behaviour depends on context and measurement. The apparent wave or particle properties are patterns in the actualisation of possibilities, not two separate substances switching identities. Treating duality as literal obscures the continuity between potential and actualisation and encourages a category mistake: assuming quantum behaviour must fit pre-existing classical metaphors.