Physics as Myth-Making: Construal, Not Cosmos

In popular and academic accounts alike, physics is often narrated as if it were uncovering the truths of the universe—eternal, external, and waiting to be discovered. We speak of “fundamental forces,” “the building blocks of reality,” and “the code of the cosmos” with a kind of reverential inevitability. Yet, from a relational perspective, these are not unmediated revelations of a pre-existing world. They are symbolic architectures, frameworks we construct to organise, predict, and communicate potential phenomena.

The allure of myth in physics is understandable. Human cognition gravitates toward stories that explain why the universe behaves as it does. A particle is “weird” not merely because it defies classical expectations, but because our symbolic scaffolding—our construal of possibility and instantiation—cannot be directly translated into ordinary language. To describe quantum mechanics, relativity, or string theory in anthropomorphic or mechanistic terms is to smooth over the discontinuities between theory, measurement, and observation. It is, in effect, myth-making: a narrative device that makes the abstract concrete and the potential seem actual.

The danger arises when these narratives are taken literally. Mechanistic metaphors, cosmic codes, or statements about the universe “observing itself” can seduce physicists and readers alike into ontological commitments they have not actually justified. When a quantum field is described as a “sea of fluctuations” or the cosmos as a “cosmic symphony,” the prose evokes substance and agency where only relational potential exists. The risk is twofold: it erases the perspectival nature of the construal, and it projects our symbolic choices onto the universe as if they were independent realities.

Relational ontology offers a corrective. The phenomena physics describes are not objects with inherent properties but events actualised through symbolic cuts—instances in which theory, observation, and social agreement converge. The “laws” of physics are not prescriptions written into matter; they are the stable alignments that emerge when repeated construals cohere. Myth, in this light, is not falsehood—it is a heuristic. But it must be recognised as such, lest heuristic metaphor harden into metaphysical assertion.

By viewing physics as a process of myth-making—of constructive construal rather than passive discovery—we open space for a more reflexive science. One that acknowledges the role of instruments, concepts, and human interpretation in shaping what counts as “real.” One that sees the cosmos not as a pre-assembled machine or a code to decode, but as a field of potential relations whose structures we map and stabilise.

In short, physics does not reveal the universe as it “is.” It reveals the universe as we can coherently construe it, moment by moment, through the meticulous alignment of symbolic and experimental acts. Understanding this does not diminish physics; it illuminates its creative and provisional power, reminding us that even our most precise theories are stories of possibility, not tablets of finality.