The theory of relativity marks one of the most decisive ruptures in the metaphysical commitments of physics. With Einstein, time was no longer a universal background against which events unfolded; instead, it was woven together with space into a relational structure, contingent on motion and perspective. The result was not simply a new theory of motion — it was a fundamental rethinking of what it means for anything to be.
From the standpoint of relational ontology, this rupture is not only welcome — it is long overdue.
The Demotion of Time as Absolute
In Newtonian mechanics, time was an independent parameter: a linear progression of instants, the same for all observers, flowing uniformly like a cosmic metronome. But in special relativity, simultaneity becomes perspectival. Two observers in relative motion will not agree on what events are “happening now.” And in general relativity, spacetime itself bends and curves, subject to the distributions of mass and energy. Time, far from being a container, becomes part of the structure that events enact.
This shift is often described as a “geometrisation” of physics. But that characterisation risks concealing something more radical: the transition from substance to relation. Spacetime is not an inert backdrop, but a field of potential that comes into being only as it is construed through interaction and measurement. The observer is no longer merely a passive spectator, but a participant in the articulation of temporal and spatial distinctions.
The Ontology of Spacetime
A relational ontology does not treat spacetime as an entity, nor even as a fixed framework. Rather, it regards spacetime as a higher-order construal: a second-order mapping of the relational possibilities enacted among processes.
To say that two events are “spacelike separated” or “timelike connected” is not to describe an underlying reality independent of perspective. It is to articulate a construal of their systemic relatedness, grounded in the affordances of signal exchange, coordination, and potential influence — all of which are perspectival constructs.
The metric structure of spacetime — the light cone, causal structure, curvature — is not a depiction of ontological furniture, but a theory of possible distinctions. And it is this theory that becomes instantiated, perspectivally, in and through the phenomena we describe as motion, gravity, and simultaneity.
Relativity as Relational Theory
The irony is that the “relativity” in Einstein’s theory is often misunderstood. It does not mean that everything is relative; it means that the relations between events are fundamental, and that no privileged frame or perspective can claim ontological priority. This insight aligns precisely with relational ontology’s core premise: that meaning and being are co-articulated in and through construal.
In this light, the principle of general covariance — that the laws of physics take the same form in all coordinate systems — is not a neutrality of description, but a declaration of relational invariance. It tells us that what persists across transformations is not a substance, but a structure of possible meanings, a semiotic invariance realised across perspectives.
Time as a Systemic Construct
Within this framework, time is not a dimension in the traditional geometric sense. It is a mode of construal — a way of cutting across the potential of process to produce meaningful distinctions. To perceive a sequence of events as “temporal” is to enact a construal that orients them in terms of before, after, and potential causality. But this orientation is not a property of the events themselves; it is a product of the system of distinctions we bring to bear.
In relativity, then, the “uncut” fabric of spacetime is not the ultimate reality — it is the relational potential from which distinct times and spaces can be constituted. Every observer’s worldline is not a traversal through a pre-existing block universe, but a perspectival actualisation of potential: an instance of spacetime configured by and through the cuts that make phenomena intelligible.
Toward a Relational Cosmology
This reframing opens a path toward a truly relational cosmology — one in which the geometry of the universe is not simply measured, but enacted through systems of coordinated construal. Spacetime becomes not a map of what is, but a theory of what can be meant: a high-order semiotic system whose instances are the very processes we call experience, interaction, and transformation.
Relativity, in this light, is not a final theory of reality. It is a monumental gesture toward what comes next: a physics that does not presume the real, but lets it be cut into being — again and again, from within.
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