Relational Cosmology: Expansion and the Fading of Process

Relational Cosmology: Expansion and the Fading of Process

In standard cosmology, the universe expands—and that expansion is accelerating. But what does this mean if space and time are not containers but relations? In a relational model, the fabric of the cosmos is not a backdrop, but an emergent web of instantiated meanings. Expansion, then, must be understood as a transformation in the relational architecture of meaning itself. This yields a triadic reframing: space intervals, time intervals, and potential for process (entropy).

1. Space Intervals Elongate

Relationally, space is not a container but a measure of difference between instances. As the universe expands, the relational distance between instances increases. This is not space "stretching" as a thing, but the intervals between events becoming longer. Galaxies are not rushing through space; their separation is increasing because the relations between them are elongating. The cosmos is not growing in size but in relational spacing.

2. Time Intervals Contract

Gravitational fields slow down local processes. As cosmic expansion thins the gravitational field, processes unfold more quickly relative to the large-scale structure of the universe. From the relational perspective, this means that time intervals contract: the duration between instantiations of meaning becomes shorter. In an expanding, gravitationally diluted cosmos, clocks tick faster relative to earlier epochs—not because time flows, but because process unfolds more rapidly.

3. Entropy Increases (Potential Decreases)

Entropy, in this model, is a reduction in the structured potential for process. As the universe expands, stars die, energy gradients flatten, and distinctions blur. The potential for meaningful process—for instantiation—diminishes. Eventually, differences become too slight to actualise anything new. The universe trends toward relational monotony: an undifferentiated state of maximum entropy where nothing can be instantiated.

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The End as the Death of Instantiation

Extrapolating this triad into the far future:

• Space intervals become infinitely elongated: meaningful relations cannot be instantiated across the void. No region can constrain or inform another.

• Time intervals locally shorten: processes accelerate, but there is less to process. Clocks tick into silence.

• Potential for process collapses: not because energy disappears, but because all differences have flattened. The field of potential meaning becomes uniform and mute.

The universe ends not with a bang, nor a whimper, but a silence—a cosmic aphasia. The final condition is not non-being, but the absence of anything that can be made actual.

This is the relational heat death: not the end of energy, but the end of instantiable difference. A semantic stillness. A sky where no new meanings can rise.

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Closing Reflection: A Semantic Horizon

Black holes present local boundaries to instantiation: event horizons beyond which nothing can be made actual to outside observers. But the expanding universe, taken to its limit, offers a cosmic event horizon of a different kind: not shaped by gravity, but by semantic exhaustion. A relational fade-out.

In such a cosmos, what finally ends is not matter, or motion, or light. What ends is meaning.

And that, perhaps, is the true death of a universe built from relations.