If quantum theory challenges the idea of time as an objective flow, relativity reconfigures time even more radically — not as something separate from space, but as part of a four-dimensional manifold. Yet in both cases, what’s at stake is not just how time behaves, but how time is constituted.
1. The Relativity of Simultaneity
One of Einstein’s deepest insights is that there is no absolute simultaneity. What counts as “now” for one observer may not be “now” for another, depending on their relative motion. In technical terms:
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The temporal order of spatially separated events is frame-dependent.
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There is no global present that stitches the universe together.
From a relational perspective, this confirms what quantum theory already hinted at: there is no universal clock — only perspectival cuts.
2. Spacetime: The Block Universe?
Relativity is often read as implying a block universe:
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All events, past and future, “exist” equally.
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Time doesn’t pass; it simply is.
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The universe is a four-dimensional structure, and change is a feature of our limited perspective.
But this reading subtly reinstates objectivism: it treats the block as ontologically prior to perspective. A relational view takes the opposite approach:
The block is not what is — it is what is construed from within relational coordinates.
The spacetime manifold becomes a map of possibility, not an object of brute existence.
3. Time as a Relational Dimension
Rather than imagining time as a fourth coordinate on par with space, a relational view insists:
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Temporal distinctions are not intrinsic to the manifold.
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They arise as construals of relational structure — particular cuts through the field of spatiotemporal potential.
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What counts as “before” and “after” is always perspectival, enacted from within a configuration of actualised relations.
Thus, relativity doesn’t eliminate the “flow” of time — it dissolves its objectivity, opening the door to a construal-based ontology of temporal experience.
4. Light Cones and Ontological Conditioning
Relativity defines causality via light cones: what can influence or be influenced is bounded by the speed of light. But this too is a relational structure:
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The past light cone of an event is not its history, but its accessible potential constraints.
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The future light cone is not a fate, but a conditioned space of actualisable futures.
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The elsewhere — events outside both — are not “simultaneous” in any objective sense, but irrelevant from that event’s perspective.
In relational terms, light cones enact a temporality, rather than being time itself.
5. Toward a Relational Relativity
We can now begin to reimagine relativistic spacetime not as a pre-given structure but as:
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A relational field of possible construals.
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A syntax of perspectival coordinates, enacted in and through situated systems.
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A theory of how meaning-constitutive agents carve temporal and spatial distinctions from a shared, unactualised potential.
This not only harmonises with the quantum view of perspectival time, but deepens it — extending the relational cut to encompass motion, simultaneity, and causality itself.
Closing
Relativity, far from contradicting the relational insights of quantum theory, amplifies them. It does not abolish time — it dethrones it. And in doing so, it invites us to rethink time not as a substance or stage, but as an ongoing construal of potential within perspective.
In the next post, we’ll explore how this relational approach to time in relativity opens the door to a unified ontology of temporality — one that moves beyond the old division between quantum and relativistic domains.
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