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.

24 Relativity Revisited: Spacetime as a Meaningful Cut

(Post 24 in “Reflexive Matter: Relational Ontology and the Physics of Meaning”)

Special relativity revolutionised our understanding of space and time — not as separate entities, but as dimensions of a unified spacetime. In relational ontology, this unification takes on new significance: it is not merely a mathematical formalism but a construal — a cut through the potential of experience that reshapes the terms of possibility.

No View from Nowhere

Einstein’s core insight was perspectival: simultaneity is not absolute. Time depends on motion. Space depends on time. And observation depends on relation. There is no privileged frame of reference. This is not just a physical finding — it is a metaphysical provocation.

In relational ontology, this decentralisation of perspective is taken further. There is not even a “God’s eye” from which the spacetime continuum is laid out like a static block. Instead, each cut through spacetime is a meaningful enactment: a way of organising potentiality into actuality.

We do not observe spacetime; we construct it — through the cuts we make to distinguish position, motion, sequence, and causality.

The Lorentz Cut: Construal of Relativistic Coherence

From this angle, the Lorentz transformations — those mathematical operations that allow us to move between observers in relative motion — are not simply computational tools. They are relational bridges. They maintain coherence across perspectival cuts, allowing a shared world to persist despite local differences in construal.

This isn’t to say that physics becomes subjectivist. Rather, construal is systematic. The relational orderings defined by special relativity reflect the constraints under which such construals can be coordinated. They are not optional. They are invariant under transformation, not because they are absolute, but because they express a deep relational invariance.

In Hallidayan terms, we might say that relativistic transformations conserve the metafunctions: ideational content, interpersonal relation, textual coherence — each must still hold across the cut.

Spacetime Is Not a Container — It Is a Phase of Meaning

Perhaps the most radical implication is this: spacetime is not a pre-existing substrate into which events are placed. It is a meaningful organisation of experience — a phase of meaning, realised through the relational constraints imposed by coordination.

Different systems may phase meaning in different ways — but the structure of spacetime as construed in relativity emerges from the need to coordinate interaction across perspectival diversity. It is a functional construal, not a metaphysical given.

2 Reference Frames as Semantic Cuts: Reconstructing Relativity without Observers

Physics textbooks tell us that a reference frame is a coordinate system — a neutral backdrop against which motion, position, and time can be measured. In relativity, each observer brings their own frame, and differences between them are reconciled through Lorentz transformations.

But what is a reference frame ontologically?

In a relational model, we must ask: does the world contain reference frames, or do we enact them?

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From Observer to Cut

Relativity is often misunderstood as “observer-dependent.” But in relational ontology, observation is not a passive reception of facts, but an active construal of potential. There are no observers in the classical sense — only cuts through a structured possibility space.

So when we speak of a reference frame, we’re not referring to a physical scaffolding “out there.” We’re referring to a semantic act: a perspectival cut that:

• selects a construal of simultaneity

• aligns spatial and temporal coordinates with a particular configuration

• organises experience into a consistent set of meaning potentials

In short: a reference frame is not a coordinate system applied to reality. It is a construal system through which reality is selectively enacted.

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Relativity without Observers

In special relativity, no frame is privileged. Events that are simultaneous in one frame are not in another. Velocities are relative. Durations dilate and lengths contract.

But these phenomena are not “effects” produced by motion — they are differences in construal. Each frame reflects a distinct perspective on the same relational system, with its own way of parsing the semantic topology of spacetime.

The Lorentz transformations don’t just convert between numbers. They translate between semantic construals — between different ways of cutting the same field of potential into temporal and spatial axes.

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Simultaneity as Semantic Configuration

Perhaps the most philosophically jarring implication of special relativity is the relativity of simultaneity. Two events that are simultaneous in one frame may occur at different times in another.

But simultaneity, on this view, is not a brute feature of the universe. It is a semantic configuration: a way of organising the temporal dimension of experience relative to a given cut. There is no “objective now” to locate. Only different cuts through spacetime, each real in its own construal.

This does not make reality “subjective.” It makes it perspectival — structured, not by independent objects in space, but by systemic orientations toward meaning.

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The Inertial Frame as a Semantic Default

In classical mechanics, an inertial frame is one in which objects move at constant velocity unless acted upon. But in our model, this is not a metaphysical baseline — it is a default construal: a systemic configuration that construes potential motion without imposed curvature.

Acceleration, then, is not a force experienced by a body, but a semantic deviation from this construal baseline — a departure from the default semantic alignment.

Even gravity, in general relativity, is no longer a force, but a curvature of the relational field. In relational terms, this curvature is a non-uniform construal of temporal and spatial possibility: a differential in semantic orientation across the field.

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The Referential Act

Ultimately, to adopt a reference frame is to perform a referential act: to cut the relational field such that a particular construal of time, motion, and event structure is made possible.

There is no frame-independent reality beneath these construals. The field is not “obscured” by perspectives. It is the system of perspectives.

And so, reference frames become not scaffolds, but instances of system: situated enactments of a structured field of semantic possibility.