Ontological Evasions in Physics: Additional Evasions Series Conclusion From Evasion to Relational Insight

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.

Ontological Evasions in Physics, Part 16 Emergent Gravity: Residual Accounting

Some approaches in modern physics propose that gravity is not fundamental but emergent from underlying microscopic degrees of freedom, such as entanglement entropy or quantum information. While this idea is mathematically and conceptually appealing, it often functions as a placeholder, evading the deeper ontological question: how does relational actualisation at the fundamental level give rise to spacetime curvature and gravitation?

The evasive manoeuvre

By invoking emergence, physics substitutes a label for an explanation. Gravity is described as a collective residual effect, rather than as the outcome of fully articulated relational dynamics. This preserves calculational and theoretical convenience while deferring the task of specifying how large-scale actualisation arises from microscopic interactions.

The ontological cost

The relational grounding of gravity is left opaque. Space, time, and curvature are treated as secondary phenomena rather than perspectival consequences of relational alignment. Possibility and constraint are obscured behind the label “emergent,” turning incompletely understood dynamics into a semantic fix rather than a reconceived ontology.

The epistemic collapse

While models can reproduce gravitational behaviour, they provide limited insight into why the system behaves as it does. Explanatory depth is sacrificed: predicting effects does not equal understanding the relational source. Science risks mistaking technical sufficiency for ontological clarity.

The theological return

Emergent gravity carries the echo of a hidden hand: a governing microstructure that, though inaccessible, produces observable order. Like a divine principle, the underlying substrate ensures coherence while remaining ontologically insulated.

A relational reframing

From a relational standpoint, gravity is not emergent in a residual sense; it is the manifestation of collective alignment across material and energetic relations. Curvature and force are perspectival outcomes of relational actualisation at multiple scales. Emergence becomes intelligible, not as a black-box label, but as the unfolding of structured possibility into actualised relational patterns.

Conclusion

Emergent gravity illustrates ontological evasion through semantic substitution. By labelling gravity as emergent without detailing the relational mechanics, physics sidesteps foundational questions. Relational ontology restores coherence: gravitational dynamics are intelligible as structured actualisation, fully grounded in relation rather than residual abstraction.

Ontological Evasions in Physics, Part 8 Dark Matter and Dark Energy: The Convenient Invisibility of the Unseen Majority

Cosmology confronts us with a stark mismatch between observation and theory. Galaxies rotate too quickly, the universe’s expansion accelerates, and visible matter accounts for only a fraction of cosmic mass-energy. To reconcile these anomalies, physics posits dark matter and dark energy: unseen substances that make up roughly 95% of the universe.

At first glance, this is an empirical success: equations are balanced, predictions match large-scale structure, and anomalies are “explained.” Yet these are also classic ontological placeholders—conceptual stand-ins that paper over gaps in understanding without addressing the underlying relational structure.

The evasive manoeuvre

Dark matter and dark energy are defined by what they do, not by what they are. They are inferred from their effects, yet their ontological status remains mysterious. Instead of reconceiving gravity, inertia, or large-scale relational dynamics, physics posits invisible substances to absorb inconsistency.

This manoeuvre preserves the formal apparatus of cosmology while evading the deeper question: how does relational actualisation operate at cosmic scales? The universe is not fully understood; it is “patched” with placeholders.

The ontological cost

By relying on dark matter and dark energy as explanatory crutches, physics suspends the need for relational coherence. Most of the cosmos becomes an unknowable reservoir: mass-energy that acts but cannot be directly individuated, related, or construed.

Relation is reduced to observable interaction. Possibility and alignment are subordinated to the necessity of filling the gaps in equations. Actuality is incomplete: the universe is mostly ghostly, inferred rather than relationally grounded.

The epistemic collapse

If 95% of reality is unknown in principle, then predictive and explanatory power is undermined. Models are constrained by observation, yet most of what matters remains invisible. Explanations risk becoming tautological: “We cannot see it, but it must exist to make the equations work.” Science teeters between empirical rigor and speculative bookkeeping.

The theological return

Once more, what appears as scientific problem-solving echoes theological structures. Dark matter and dark energy function as invisible agents ensuring cosmic order. They guarantee consistency where relational understanding is incomplete, much like a divine hand maintaining harmony in a partially inscrutable cosmos.

A relational reframing

From a relational perspective, the anomalies motivating dark matter and dark energy may signal a misapprehension of large-scale relational dynamics, not the existence of hidden substances. Gravitation, inertia, and cosmological expansion are emergent phenomena arising from collective alignment across scales.

In this view, the unseen majority is not literally invisible matter, but a domain of relational constraints and interactions yet fully mapped. Actualisation is not suspended; it is misinterpreted. Possibility and constraint operate relationally, and the cosmos can be intelligible without invisible placeholders.

Conclusion

Dark matter and dark energy are physics’ most conspicuous ontological placeholders: solutions that maintain equations while evading relational understanding. A relational reframing restores coherence and intelligibility, emphasising that cosmic structure emerges from actualised relations, not from unseen entities conjured to fill gaps.