25 Curving the Cut: Relational Ontology and General Relativity

(Post 25 in “Reflexive Matter: Relational Ontology and the Physics of Meaning”)

Special relativity showed us that spacetime is perspectival — a relational manifold, not an absolute background. General relativity goes further: it shows that the shape of spacetime itself depends on the distribution of energy and momentum. Mass curves spacetime. Motion follows the curvature. What was once stage becomes player.

In a relational ontology, this curvature is not a property of a passive arena but the effect of meaningful cuts through potential. The geometry of spacetime is not imposed from outside — it is enacted.

Gravity as the Organisation of Possibility

Traditionally, gravity is treated as a force or as a distortion of geometry. But from the relational standpoint, gravity is the reflexive constraint on possibility — the way in which one construal (a distribution of mass-energy) organises the potential for further construal (motion, sequence, relation).

A massive body does not “bend” spacetime in some external sense — it reorganises the conditions under which further distinctions can be made. The curvature is not caused by the object; it is the object, relationally understood.

The Metric Field as Reflexive Meaning

General relativity’s central object is the metric tensor — a mathematical construct that determines the shape of spacetime at every point. But in our terms, the metric is not merely a field of numbers — it is a reflexive index of relational construal. It expresses how meaning is phased locally, how cuts can be coordinated, how perspectival integrity is maintained.

There is no universal clock. No absolute simultaneity. No fixed stage. Only relational orderings, shaped by the very patterns they shape in turn.

This is not circularity but reflexivity: meaning shaped by its own enactment. Matter is not embedded in spacetime — it enacts spacetime as a meaningful organisation of the potential for motion, interaction, and relation.

Toward a Meaningful Cosmos

What emerges is a picture of the universe not as a block or a mechanism, but as a vast reflexive coordination: a cosmos of meaningful distinctions. Spacetime curvature is not just geometry; it is the choreography of relational potential. And the equations of general relativity become not just laws but principles of coordination — describing how the meaningful coherence of experience is conserved as patterns shift and evolve.