“The world does not wait to be seen—it becomes, through seeing.”
Quantum mechanics confronts us with a cosmos that refuses to sit still, refuses to be pinned down until we look. Particles that are waves, outcomes that are probabilities, realities that shimmer in superposition until someone—or something—makes a measurement.
But in a relational ontology, we can ask more radical questions than "What exists before observation?" We can ask:
What is observation? What is existence? What is actualised when we mean something?
And perhaps most powerfully: What if collapse is not caused by looking—but by meaning?
From Measurement to Meaning
In conventional quantum theory, the wavefunction represents a set of possibilities—a “superposition” of all the ways the system might actualise. Upon measurement, this range of possibilities “collapses” into a single, definite outcome.
But measurement is still conceived as an external act—a poke from outside that fixes the system into place. Observation becomes a kind of magical finger that forces the universe to make up its mind.
Relational ontology changes the game.
-
There is no “outside.”
-
There is no observer who is not also a participant.
-
And there is no collapse without construal—meaning is what brings possibility into instance.
The wavefunction is not a cloudy thing waiting to be disturbed. It is a field of relational potential—a structured set of possible meanings that has not yet been actualised.
Measurement is not disturbance. It is instantiation.
The Meaner and the Instance
In this framework, we replace “observer” with a more generative term: the meaner. A meaner is not just someone who looks—it is any entity that construes the world as meaning. Meaning-making is not an epiphenomenon of consciousness. It is the mechanism by which the world becomes actual.
A quantum event, then, is not a case of a particle choosing a path at random. It is a field of potential being shaped into instance through relational construal. The system does not exist independently of its measurement. It exists as a relation that becomes instance through interaction.
This is not a metaphor.
It is a metaphysic: ontology is performative. The world does not precede its expression. It comes into being through it.
The Wavefunction as Structured Potential
Think of the wavefunction not as a literal physical wave, nor as an invisible entity spread out in space. Think of it as a symbolic structure of potential:
-
It encodes all the possible relations that could be actualised.
-
It is not “there” in the way a table is there.
-
It is a semiotic field—a grammar of unfolding possibility.
When interaction occurs—when one process meets another—one instance is actualised, and the rest of the potential remains unactualised, not because it disappears, but because it was never an instance. It was possibility—and possibility is not actuality waiting to happen, but meaning waiting to be made.
Uncertainty as a Feature of Becoming
In this light, the famous uncertainty principle no longer appears as a glitch or limit of knowledge. It becomes a reflection of the structure of becoming.
Uncertainty is not a lack of information. It is the inescapable nature of potential. Before meaning is actualised, it is not just unknown—it is undefined.
This is not ignorance—it is indeterminacy as a positive metaphysical state.
Recursive Instantiation and Emergent Systems
Once we understand that instantiation is relational and recursive, quantum phenomena begin to echo more universal patterns of emergence:
-
A cell differentiates through interaction with its environment.
-
A thought becomes conscious through dynamic neural resonance.
-
A poem becomes meaning through a reader’s construal.
These are all forms of relational collapse: structured potential becomes actual instance through interaction, through construal, through meaning.
Quantum mechanics is not an exotic island of weirdness—it is the base-layer poetry of becoming. And once we see that, the apparent split between quantum and classical reality begins to dissolve. Everything emerges from relation. Nothing is actualised alone.
No System Without Instantiation
This is the ultimate inversion of classical physics:
-
The system does not precede the measurement.
-
The wavefunction is not an objective thing.
-
The “particle” is not hidden until it is revealed.
-
The cosmos is not there, waiting to be found—it is there, becoming through being meant.
The Quantum Cosmos as Meaning-Maker
What emerges from this reframe is not a smaller, stranger world—but a more intimate and generative one:
-
We do not observe the universe from outside—we co-create it through relation.
-
Meaning is not an overlay on reality—it is the very mode through which reality is instantiated.
-
The fundamental unit of the cosmos is not the particle, or the wave—but the relation.
In such a cosmos, to mean is to become.
And quantum mechanics ceases to be a puzzle of probability. It becomes a grammar of potential, a map of how the world speaks itself into being, moment by moment, instance by instance.
No comments:
Post a Comment