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

Across eight instalments, we have traced a consistent pattern in modern physics: when confronted with paradox, anomaly, or limitation, physics often chooses not to rethink its ontology, but to evade it. Superdeterminism collapses possibility into predestination. The block universe freezes time. Wavefunction collapse smuggles mind into matter. Many Worlds multiplies reality to infinity. The simulation hypothesis outsources actuality to an external programmer. QBism retreats into the observer’s beliefs. The string landscape proliferates possibilities without selection. Dark matter and dark energy stand in as invisible placeholders.

These evasions share a common logic: preserve formalism, secure predictive apparatus, and avoid confronting the question of relation—how actuality, possibility, and perspectival alignment are instantiated in the world. In doing so, physics repeatedly sacrifices ontological coherence for technical convenience.

The cost of evasion

Each manoeuvre carries epistemic consequences. Experiment becomes tautological, observation collapses into belief, infinity replaces relational actualisation, and unexplained placeholders dominate explanatory structures. Even when formal success is achieved, understanding suffers: we no longer apprehend how reality unfolds, only that it conforms to equations.

The theological undertones recur across these cases. Whether framed as pre-scripted determinism, divine authorship in Many Worlds, simulation programmers, or invisible cosmic agents, physics repeatedly imports the structure of omnipotence in order to rescue its formalisms. What is presented as rigorous reasoning is often an implicit metaphysics in disguise.

Relational insight

Relational ontology offers a coherent alternative. It foregrounds relation itself: actuality is perspectival, possibility emerges through interaction, and constraints are not external impositions but features of relational alignment. Measurement, temporal unfolding, and emergent structure are intelligible not because of hidden authors, infinite worlds, or invisible matter, but because relation operates collectively across scales.

This framework dissolves paradoxes without mutilating ontology. Superdeterminism’s fatalism is replaced by emergent possibility; the block universe’s frozen time by perspectival becoming; wavefunction collapse by actualisation across relational construals; Many Worlds’ plenitude by selective emergent outcomes; simulation and QBism by relational alignment rather than external or subjective authorship; string landscape by structured, emergent possibility; dark matter and dark energy by large-scale relational interactions.

The lesson

The pattern is clear: physics often chooses evasion over reflection, sacrificing ontological clarity for technical expedience. Recognising these evasions is the first step toward a more coherent understanding of reality. By privileging relation over abstraction, emergence over pre-scripted determinism, and perspectival actualisation over infinite speculation, we reclaim both intelligibility and explanatory power.

Ontological evasion is avoidable. Relational insight is unavoidable.

Ontological Evasions in Physics, Part 4 Many Worlds: Infinity as a Get-Out Clause

Quantum mechanics confronts physics with stubborn contradictions. The wavefunction can evolve deterministically, yet measurement produces definite outcomes. One response to this paradox is the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI): every possible outcome of a quantum event is realised, each in its own separate branch of the cosmos.

At first glance, MWI appears audacious, even elegant: no collapse is required, the equations are preserved, and determinism is restored. But this is precisely where physics’ ontological evasion comes into focus.

The evasive manoeuvre

MWI resolves the problem of quantum indeterminacy not by confronting relation or possibility, but by multiplying reality ad infinitum. Instead of asking how a single world actualises from potential, physics declares: all worlds are actualised somewhere. The universe is no longer a single unfolding process; it is an infinite tree of eternally branching, non-interacting realities.

This manoeuvre preserves formalism at all costs. It allows equations to remain untouched, but it does so by evacuating the question of how relation operates in a single, coherent cosmos.

The ontological cost

Infinity becomes a crutch. Actuality is diluted: every possible outcome exists, but nowhere in particular. Individuation is meaningless if every branch actualises every variation. Relation is flattened: each branch is self-contained, severing the very notion of perspectival alignment that gives events significance.

In effect, MWI trades a problem of indeterminacy for a problem of ontological inflation. Possibility is no longer emergent; it is exhaustively realised across a proliferation of worlds that we can never access or interact with. Reality becomes a metaphysical forest with infinite trees, none of which can be said to matter more than any other.

The epistemic collapse

MWI also undermines the practice of science. If every outcome occurs somewhere, what does it mean to perform an experiment? Predictive power loses its bite: certainty is replaced by certainty somewhere, but not here. Evidence can no longer confirm or disconfirm a theory in any meaningful sense, because all possibilities are realised. Science risks turning into an exercise in cataloguing infinite alternatives rather than understanding a coherent, actual world.

The theological return

The infinite proliferation of worlds carries an implicit theological echo. The cosmos becomes a plenitude of realities, reminiscent of divine omnipotence: everything that can happen does happen. Once again, physics substitutes an ontological miracle for relational coherence, presenting infinity as the solution to its own conceptual impasse.

A relational reframing

From a relational perspective, the paradox dissolves without recourse to infinite branching. Possibility is emergent, not pre-packaged; it actualises through perspectival and collective alignment. Only some outcomes are realised in relation to specific construals; others remain potential, constrained by the context of actualisation.

Many Worlds mistakes the indeterminacy of relation for an absence of determinacy. A relational ontology restores both coherence and openness: actuality is real, possibility is meaningful, and infinity is no longer required to save equations.

Conclusion

The Many Worlds Interpretation is an elegant evasion: infinity substitutes for relational insight. By multiplying universes, physics preserves formalism while abandoning the task of understanding how possibility unfolds in relation. The more fruitful path is not proliferation, but relational alignment: actualisation without the need for cosmic overreach.

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.