Ontological Evasions in Physics, Part 3 Wavefunction Collapse: Smuggling Mind into Matter

Quantum mechanics introduced the wavefunction: a mathematical object encoding the probabilities of different outcomes. The formalism is clear enough, but the question has always been: what does the wavefunction mean? What is it a description of?

The orthodox answer—the so-called Copenhagen interpretation—deploys one of physics’ most enduring evasions: wavefunction collapse.

The evasive manoeuvre

The story goes like this: the wavefunction evolves deterministically according to Schrödinger’s equation, until a measurement occurs. At that moment, the wavefunction “collapses” into a definite outcome. Before measurement: superposition. After measurement: actuality.

This picture offers physicists a convenient divide. Quantum weirdness on one side, classical certainty on the other. The catch is that the divide rests on a vague and unstable category: “measurement.” What counts as a measurement? Why should the cosmos care whether a device—or a human observer—is watching?

Here the evasion is clear. Instead of reconceiving causation and relation, physics projects the indeterminacy onto the observer, as if mind itself must intervene in order for matter to be real.

The ontological cost

Wavefunction collapse imports consciousness as an unacknowledged deus ex machina. Ontology is split into two domains: one governed by smooth mathematical evolution, the other punctuated by miraculous collapse. Reality is fractured into dual regimes, joined only by the mysterious agency of “measurement.”

This is not an explanation but a deferral: a refusal to confront what possibility and actuality mean in relation. By outsourcing the problem to “mind,” physics preserves its equations at the cost of ontological incoherence.

The epistemic collapse

Science depends on the reproducibility of observation. Yet if reality hinges on “measurement” in some undefined sense, the ground of scientific practice is eroded. Collapse theory implies that experimenters are not probing reality, but actively conjuring it into existence by their acts of observation. Inquiry then loses its neutrality and becomes an act of ontological magic.

The theological return

Again, the supposed hard-headed stance conceals theological traces. The collapse postulate reinstates a metaphysics of miracle: smooth order interrupted by sudden intervention. The observer becomes a priestly figure, mediating between potential and actual, a stand-in for divine agency.

A relational reframing

From a relational perspective, the puzzle dissolves. The wavefunction is not a ghostly object waiting for collapse, but a construal of perspectival potential. Measurement is not an ontological rupture but a perspectival alignment: the actualisation of relation between system and context. Possibility does not end in collapse; it unfolds into new individuations.

The real lesson of quantum mechanics is not that mind conjures matter, but that actuality is always perspectival: emergent from relational construal, not from a hidden dualism.

Conclusion

Wavefunction collapse is physics’ way of smuggling mind into matter while pretending to keep ontology clean. By placing the burden on “measurement,” it evades the deeper question of how possibility actualises within relation.

The alternative is to abandon the collapse story altogether: not mind intervening in matter, but relation unfolding into actuality without need for miracles or evasions.

Ontological Evasions in Physics, Part 1 Superdeterminism: Physics in a Straitjacket of Its Own Making

Bell’s theorem posed a sharp dilemma for physics. If quantum correlations cannot be explained by local hidden variables, then physics must either accept some form of nonlocality or rethink its ontology of relation and possibility. For many, this was an intolerable choice: they wanted to preserve the sacred image of locality without conceding anything to a deeper reworking of ontology. Out of this tension came a strange proposal: superdeterminism.

The superdeterminist escape

Superdeterminism suggests that the “choices” made in an experiment—the settings of detectors, the generation of random numbers, even the experimenter’s own decisions—are not genuinely open possibilities at all. They were already determined from the very beginning of the universe. The appearance of freedom, of contingency, of probing reality through experiment, is just that: appearance. Everything, down to the last twitch of an electron and the last flick of a human finger on a switch, was written in advance.

This saves locality, but at what cost?

The ontological price

Superdeterminism collapses the openness of possibility into the closure of necessity. It denies that relation can ever actualise anything new. Individuation is flattened into a cosmic fate; construal is rendered illusory. The world becomes nothing but the replay of a pre-ordained script, written once and for all at the “beginning.”

Such an ontology is not simply deterministic. It is paranoid: no event can escape its already-fixed trajectory. The entire unfolding of the cosmos is a puppet theatre where both puppets and puppeteers were wired from the start.

The epistemic collapse

Physics prides itself on being an experimental science. But if superdeterminism is true, then experiment is no longer an open probe into nature. Every result was predetermined to vindicate precisely the theories we already hold. Evidence cannot arbitrate between competing accounts, because every outcome has been scripted to deliver one specific confirmation.

In this way, superdeterminism undermines the very epistemic practice of science. It turns inquiry into tautology, an elaborate self-confirmation ritual disguised as investigation.

The theological return

Ironically, the move that presents itself as the most “hard-nosed” of physics is structurally theological. Superdeterminism smuggles back in the figure of the absolute author, who wrote the entire cosmic play in advance. All questions, all objections, all experiments are lines already inscribed in the script.

This is not science emancipating itself from metaphysics, but science returning—blindly and unknowingly—to a metaphysics of divine preordination.

A relational reframing

The dilemma posed by Bell does not require such self-defeating solutions. From a relational ontology, possibility is not pre-scripted. It emerges perspectivally through the collective actualisation of relation. Correlations without local causation are not “spooky” once causation itself is re-understood as alignment across perspectival horizons.

The locality vs nonlocality axis misleads because it presumes a fixed grid of independent entities joined by causal arrows. A relational framing begins instead with relation itself: construal scales, individuates, and aligns without presupposing absolute separability. What physics experiences as paradox is simply the fracture line of its own ontological assumptions.

Conclusion

Superdeterminism is not a daring new proposal. It is physics retreating into a straitjacket of its own making. Faced with the challenge of Bell’s theorem, physics could choose to rethink its ontology of relation and possibility. Instead, superdeterminism denies openness altogether.

The more fruitful move is to accept what superdeterminism cannot: that reality is not a closed script but a collective and perspectival unfolding of relation.