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.