4 The Assumption of “Symmetry”

Physics venerates symmetry. Conservation laws, invariants, and the search for fundamental symmetries are central to theory. Symmetry is treated as an objective property of the universe — a reflection of its deepest order. Deviations are exceptions; regularities are ordained.

But symmetry, like law, time, and information, is a construal. What counts as symmetric depends on the cut the observer imposes: the frame chosen, the quantities measured, the patterns deemed relevant. Invariants are not “out there” waiting to be discovered; they are stabilised by relational perspective, by the ways we organise potentialities and interpret correspondences.

By elevating symmetry to ontological status, physics projects modulation — inevitability, universal rule — onto modal relations. The structural possibilities of systems are interpreted as prescriptive regularities. This slippage masks the act of construal: the world does not enforce invariance; observers detect, highlight, and stabilise patterns that are relationally possible.

Recognising symmetry as relational rather than absolute restores nuance. It preserves the explanatory power of invariance while acknowledging that regularity emerges from perspective, not decree. Like law, causality, time, measurement, randomness, and information, symmetry is a lens through which the universe is interpreted — not a force that compels it.

Taken together, these critiques reveal a recurrent pattern in physics: the misreading of possibility as necessity, the projection of relational patterns as absolute laws. To see the frame is to recognise that the architecture of physics rests not only on phenomena but on the symbolic and perspectival choices we enact to make sense of them.