The Irreconcilability Illusion

Norma Sanchez asks whether general relativity and quantum physics are “irreconcilable.” It is a familiar refrain: two “grand theories,” one cosmic, one atomic, each elegant in isolation but mutually unintelligible. The myth here is not simply about their incompatibility — it is about the assumption that there must be a single, unified theory of reality that resolves all contradictions.

From a relational ontology perspective, this “irreconcilability” dissolves once we expose the construal at work. Both relativity and quantum mechanics are systems of theoretical potential — structured ways of construing physical phenomena. Relativity construes experience of massive bodies and curved spacetime; quantum mechanics construes phenomena of atomic and subatomic interaction. Each system is internally coherent, but coherence does not entail universal reach. To insist that the two must “fit together” is already to mistake theories for a pre-given reality they are supposed to represent.

Sanchez rightly notes that the problem arises when relativity is pushed below its construal horizon: the notion of “point particles” generates infinities that “make no sense.” But this is not a signal of failure. It is the mark of systemic cut-off: the limits of the potential that relativity theorises. Similarly, quantum mechanics, when extended upward to the cosmic scale, strains its own logic.

Attempts at reconciliation — string theory, quantised gravity, quantum spacetime — all presume that meaning is missing, waiting to be completed by some meta-framework. Relational ontology instead reframes the situation: the problem is not a broken reality needing a fix, but our demand for a single master construal. Reality is not “in pieces” to be glued together; it is always already construed through perspectives that are mutually delimiting.

In Sanchez’s hope that “the two frameworks can be united” through new observations, we hear the persistence of the myth: the belief that “more data” will force nature to speak in a single tongue. But data, too, are construed; observation never escapes the cut of theory. What new experiments will do is open fresh horizons of construal — new ways of coordinating, phasing, and aligning meaning at different scales.

Thus, the real task is not reconciliation, but recognition: physics is not fractured, it is perspectival. Relativity and quantum mechanics are not enemies awaiting a truce, but parallel cuts in the fabric of possibility. Their so-called “irreconcilability” is a symptom of the myth of the one true theory, a myth worth leaving behind.