Ontological Evasions in Physics, Part 7 The String Landscape: Everything, Therefore Nothing

String theory promised a unified framework for fundamental physics. Yet it has faced a profound challenge: the theory allows for an enormous multiplicity of possible vacuum states—so-called string vacua—each corresponding to a different set of physical constants and laws. The result is the string landscape, a staggeringly large collection of potential universes.

At first glance, this seems like a solution: every observed set of constants exists somewhere in the landscape, so there is no need to explain why our universe is “fine-tuned.” But the move is a classic ontological evasion.

The evasive manoeuvre

Faced with the problem of contingency, the string landscape abandons constraint. Instead of asking why this universe, with these relations and actualisations, emerges, physics declares that everything exists somewhere. The vastness of the landscape is invoked as a shield against the need for explanation: if all possibilities are realised, then nothing is truly contingent, and no relational structure requires deeper justification.

This manoeuvre preserves the mathematical framework, but it does so by converting the universe into a multiversal catalogue. Reality becomes a bookkeeping exercise, with actualisation replaced by exhaustive potentiality.

The ontological cost

The string landscape flattens relational actuality. Possibility is no longer perspectival or emergent; it is pre-encoded across an infinite field of vacua. Individuation loses meaning: all configurations exist, so there is no horizon of selection, no perspectival alignment that gives a particular outcome significance.

In effect, the landscape transforms ontology into sheer plenitude. Everything is possible, but nothing is relationally grounded. Actualisation is irrelevant because all potential outcomes coexist somewhere in the multiverse.

The epistemic collapse

Scientific practice relies on the ability to discriminate, to test, to falsify. The string landscape renders these procedures impotent. If every outcome is realised somewhere, then no observation can confirm or disconfirm theory in the conventional sense. Predictive power collapses into the vacuity of “it exists somewhere,” leaving physics stranded in an epistemic fog.

The theological return

Once again, what is dressed as physics mirrors a theological structure. The landscape functions as a cosmic omnipotence: all possibilities exist, as if the universe were a divine archive of potentialities. Fine-tuning is explained not by relational actualisation but by the inevitability of exhaustive plenitude.

A relational reframing

A relational ontology resolves the puzzle without invoking infinity. Possibility emerges perspectivally through actualisation: certain configurations occur because relational alignment permits them. Constraints are real, relational, and context-dependent; they are not pre-encoded across a multiverse.

Actualisation is meaningful precisely because it is selective. The richness of possibility is preserved, but it is never an undifferentiated plenitude. Relational thinking restores coherence: the cosmos is structured, contingent, and intelligible, not merely a catalogued infinity.

Conclusion

The string landscape is physics’ most extravagant ontological evasion yet: an appeal to plenitude substitutes for relational insight. By declaring that everything exists somewhere, it abandons the task of explaining how actuality emerges within relation. A relational reframing restores both intelligibility and empirical efficacy: possibility is emergent, actualisation is selective, and infinity is unnecessary.