Parts 9–16 have surveyed a second wave of ontological evasions in physics and cosmology. Here again, a pattern emerges: when faced with contingency, complexity, or relational subtlety, physics often opts for technical or conceptual shortcuts rather than rethinking ontology.
The evasions revisited
Anthropic Principle: Explanation is displaced onto the observer; contingency becomes tautology.
Renormalisation: Infinities are swept aside rather than confronted relationally.
Inflationary Cosmology: Anomalies are erased by fiat through hyper-expansion.
Cosmic Initial Conditions: The first frame is insulated as a brute given.
Wavefunction Realism: Abstract Hilbert spaces are reified, masking relational actualisation.
Cosmological Constant: Tunable parameters replace relational understanding.
Entanglement: “Spooky action” preserves separation rather than relational coherence.
Emergent Gravity: Labels of emergence substitute for explicated relational dynamics.
Each manoeuvre protects formalism, secures predictive success, or maintains the comfort of established paradigms. Yet each does so at the cost of ontological clarity: possibility, alignment, and relational actualisation are repeatedly sidelined.
The cumulative cost
Technical success obscures understanding. Explanations are circular, abstracted, or deferred to hypothetical entities. Observers, constants, infinities, or emergent labels act as placeholders for what physics cannot yet apprehend about the relational unfolding of reality. Across this second wave of evasions, epistemic integrity is compromised in the name of mathematical or conceptual convenience.
The theological echo
Even in ostensibly secular formulations, the structure of these evasions mirrors theological reasoning: hidden agents, privileged conditions, and omnipotent parameters are invoked implicitly to guarantee coherence and intelligibility. Ontological evasion is thus entwined with metaphysical motifs, from subtle divinities in constants to unseen architects in emergent constructs.
Relational insight
Relational ontology resolves the pattern elegantly. Across all these cases, what appears evasive becomes intelligible when relation is treated as fundamental:
Possibility is perspectival, not brute.
Alignment and coherence emerge from collective actualisation, not arbitrary dials or abstract spaces.
Observers, measurement, and initial conditions are embedded within relational dynamics, not privileged outside them.
Emergence is a structured process, not a semantic placeholder.
Viewed relationally, each “evasion” is exposed as an ontological misalignment between formalism and actuality. By foregrounding relational actualisation, these phenomena become intelligible without recourse to tautologies, infinities, or metaphysical placeholders.
The lesson
The second wave of ontological evasions confirms the logic first identified in Parts 1–8: physics repeatedly chooses evasion over reflection. Technical success, predictive power, and formal elegance cannot substitute for ontological insight. Relational framing restores intelligibility, reconnects actuality and possibility, and dissolves the paradoxes that evasions are meant to suppress.
Ontological evasion is avoidable. Relational insight is unavoidable.