But what are “laws” in a universe where entities are not fundamental, and where space, time, and causality are themselves emergent from relational processes?
From a relational perspective, physical laws are not imposed rules but constraints on the actualisation of potential within a field of relations. They describe the stable regularities of how coherence unfolds.
1. The Classical Conception of Law
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Laws are eternal, universal, and external to what they govern,
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They describe interactions between independently existing objects,
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Their authority lies in predictive power and formal elegance.
2. Relational Reframing
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Laws express systemic constraints on how relational configurations can change,
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They are patterns of regularity emergent from deeper relational structures,
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They do not govern entities but modulate transitions within a dynamic field of potential.
3. Implications for Physics
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Law becomes context-sensitive and scale-dependent: different regimes yield different dominant constraints,
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Universality is reinterpreted as coherence across perspectives, not uniform imposition,
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Apparent “violations” of law (e.g. quantum anomalies, spontaneous symmetry breaking) reflect shifts in constraint structures, not breakdowns of order.
4. Example: Conservation Laws
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Rather than arising from intrinsic properties of particles, conservation can be viewed as the preservation of coherence under transformation,
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Noether’s theorem itself reveals a deep link between symmetries (relational patterns) and conserved quantities (invariant constraints).
Closing
Physical law, from a relational standpoint, is not a divine edict etched into spacetime. It is the expression of systemic constraint—relational coherence unfolding through possibility space.
In our next post, we will explore how this reimagining of law connects with the idea of symmetry and invariance in fundamental physics.
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