Reframing Reality: Black Holes, Observation, Cosmology, and Myth

Reframing Reality: Black Holes, Observation, Cosmology, and Myth

Modern physics has often presupposed a cosmos structured by an independent fabric of space-time, governed by observer-independent laws. Observation is typically treated as incidental to a reality that exists prior to and apart from it. But what if these assumptions obscure something fundamental? If space and time are not a neutral backdrop but dimensions of instantiable relations between instances, and if observation is not merely epistemic but essential to actualising reality, then our cosmology requires reframing. This post explores four implications of that reframing: black holes, the role of observation, the evolution of the cosmos, and the relation between science and myth.

Black Holes: Not Singularities, but Extreme Actualisation

In conventional accounts, black holes are described as singularities where space-time tears or curves infinitely. But if space and time are dimensions of instances, not an external medium, then a black hole is not a rupture in a fabric but a region of extreme gravitational constraint in which relational potential is highly contracted. What is instantiated in a black hole is not infinite curvature but a dense configuration of relational instances, tightly bound within a gravitational field.

Rather than conceiving the event horizon as the boundary of a breakdown in physical law, we can interpret it as a threshold beyond which instantiation is no longer co-articulated with the relational network of the external cosmos. In this view, information is not destroyed but reconfigured within a new field of instantiated relations. The so-called singularity may mark the outer limit of what our semiotic systems can instantiate meaningfully from relational potential, not the breakdown of physics itself.

Observation in Physics: Ontological Participation, Not Epistemic Interference

The persistent tension between classical and quantum models centres on the observer. Classical physics presumes a reality that exists regardless of observation. Quantum physics, however, suggests that observation is part of what brings about the actualisation of a particular state.

If space and time are instantiated relationally, not independently, then observation must be understood not as the passive registering of a state but as participation in the instantiation of reality. The observer is not separate from the observed but a co-instantiator of relations. In this frame, the distinction between potential and instance becomes central: the wavefunction describes relational potential; measurement is the actualisation of a specific relation within a particular network of instantiation.

Wave-particle duality, then, is not a paradox of being, but a semiotic reflection of how meaning potential is instantiated as meaning instance. What appears as a "collapse" is the transition from the potentiality of relational structure to the actuality of an instance, contingent on the observer's participation in a given relational field.

Cosmology Reframed: Instantiating a Universe, Not Expanding a Fabric

If we move away from the notion of the universe expanding into a pre-existing space-time, we can reconceive cosmic history as the progressive instantiation of relational structure from undifferentiated potential. The Big Bang, then, is not an explosion of matter into space, but the emergence of instantiable relations—an initial phase of immense semiotic productivity.

Cosmic inflation becomes a phase of rapid instantiation, not expansion. What unfolds is not a stretching of space but the actualisation of a vast number of interrelated instances of time and space. Dark energy, in this model, is not a force that pushes space apart but an index of continuing instantiation from relational potential. The apparent acceleration of the universe reflects the ongoing process of semiotic emergence.

The fate of the universe, accordingly, is not to be determined by thermodynamic finality but by the structure of relational potential: whether instantiation continues, slows, or ceases. The universe may approach a state not of heat death, but of maximal actualisation—an instantiational limit, not an entropic end.

Science and Myth: Updating the Mythic Structure of Cosmology

Joseph Campbell once suggested that modern science needs its myths. But what if scientific cosmology remains mythic in ways it has not recognised? The idea of an objective space-time fabric, observer-independent laws, and a cosmos expanding into emptiness all echo older mythic forms.

If we instead foreground instantiation and relational actualisation, then the universe is not a machine governed by external laws but an unfolding network of meaning-bearing instances. This resonates with ancient cosmologies that saw the universe as alive—not in a literal sense, but as a system participating in its own realisation.

Our role as observers is not incidental to the cosmos but intrinsic to its unfolding. Meaning is not an afterthought or a by-product of complexity—it is part of the structural logic of instantiation itself. Observation is an act of co-instantiating the universe from potential, aligning the scientific project with a new mythic narrative grounded in participation rather than detachment.

Conclusion: From Relational Potential to Meaningful Instance

Reframing cosmology in terms of instantiation and relational actualisation invites a profound shift in how we understand black holes, quantum phenomena, cosmic evolution, and our own epistemic practices. Space and time are not containers but dimensions of relations instantiated through participation. Black holes are not singularities but sites of constrained instantiation. The universe is not expanding into emptiness but unfolding through ongoing actualisation.

To say that meaning is fundamental is not to reduce science to subjectivity, but to recognise that the cosmos is not merely material—it is also semiotic. Reality, in this view, is not that which exists independently of us, but that which is instantiated in and through our participation as meaning-makers. The task ahead is not simply to describe the universe, but to continue co-instantiating it with care, precision, and wonder.