1 Events, Frames, and the Unfolding of Meaning
In developing a relational ontology grounded in process, instantiation, and meaning, we’ve steadily reimagined key scientific domains: light, particles, forces, the periodic table, and even the cosmos. Yet, at the heart of modern physics lies one of the most elegant and revolutionary frameworks: special relativity. How might it look when refracted through our ontology of unfolding relation?
This first post sets the scene. Rather than diving straight into time dilation or length contraction, we begin with the concept of the event — because in our ontology, time and space are not containers, but dimensions of unfolding. To speak of a frame, a velocity, or a boundary condition, we must first clarify what it is that unfolds.
1. The Event Reconsidered
In Einsteinian relativity, an event is a point in space and time. But in our relational model, this needs reframing. Space and time are not independently existing dimensions, but relational perspectives on the unfolding of processes. An event, therefore, is not a point in spacetime but a convergent actualisation — a point where fields of potential become momentarily co-instantiated in a processual unfolding.
Each event inherits its coordinates not from an absolute geometry, but from the intersecting relations that bring it into meaning:
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Relations of motion and interaction.
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Relations of measurement and observation.
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Relations of meaning-potential within a semiotic system (like physics itself).
2. Reference Frames as Construals of Unfolding
In standard relativity, an inertial frame of reference is a coordinate system in which Newton’s laws hold. In our ontology, a reference frame is better understood as a semiotic construal: a way of construing the ordering of events from the standpoint of a particular process system — an observer, an instrument, a relational locus of unfolding.
Reference frames are semiotic constructs through which consciousness construes relational configurations. They reflect:
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Which processes are selected as reference points.
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Which changes are treated as motion versus background.
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Which dimensions (e.g. duration, extension, simultaneity) are treated as relevant to the construal.
They are not passive contexts but active selections of meaning from potential.
3. Relational Velocity and the Grammar of Motion
In physics, velocity is often taken as a relative quantity — motion with respect to a frame. But here, velocity is not a primitive given, but a relational construal of change. That is:
From a relational perspective, velocity is not merely distance over time, but the co-articulation of unfolding dimensions across processes. A change in one frame's processual rhythm relative to another construes a velocity, not because some thing is moving through space, but because some unfolding is non-aligned in time and space with another.
4. The Boundary Question Emerges
We now reach the hinge: What happens when the difference in unfolding becomes a limit? When relational construals no longer align in space-time? That’s where light — and its speed — enters as a boundary condition.
But here, we hold off. The next post will explore:
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Why the speed of light is not a property of light, but a boundary in the grammar of relational unfolding.
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Why space contracts and time dilates not because they are warped substances, but because the construal of unfolding across non-aligned systems forces a boundary reconfiguration.
Toward the Boundary Grammar
This post has laid the groundwork:
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Events as processual instantiations.
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Frames as construals of unfolding.
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Velocity as relational misalignment.
From here, we’re ready to approach the boundary conditions of light, black holes, and relativistic limits — not as mysterious metaphysical constraints, but as semiotically coherent reconfigurations of unfolding meaning across systems.
2 Light and the Limits of Relational Unfolding
In Post 1, we reconceptualised the key building blocks of relativity — event, frame, and velocity — as construals of unfolding processes rather than coordinates in a pre-given grid. We now approach the hinge of special relativity: light. Not as particle or wave, but as a boundary condition in the grammar of relational construal.
What does it mean to say that the speed of light is constant for all observers? And how can our relational ontology make sense of this apparent paradox — without recourse to absolute frames, invisible aethers, or curving substances?
1. Light as a Relational Boundary
In classical and relativistic physics alike, light plays a peculiar role: it’s massless, always in motion, and always moves at the same speed, no matter the motion of the source or observer. Yet in our relational model, the constancy of light's speed is not an empirical fact to be explained, but a semiotic constraint that arises from the nature of unfolding itself.
We propose:
Light is not a thing with a speed; it is the limit of coherent relational construal across unfolding processes.
This is not a denial of light’s empirical detectability. Rather, it is a reframing:
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Light is the boundary at which unfolding systems remain in coherent relation.
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To be “moving at the speed of light” is not to occupy a privileged velocity, but to define the maximal synchronisation across all construals of unfolding.
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Anything faster would render unfolding incoherent — incapable of being semiotically coordinated across frames.
2. Space Contraction and Time Dilation Reframed
In standard relativity, objects in motion contract in the direction of travel and their time appears to slow. These are not illusions — they are necessary reconfigurations of how different frames synchronise unfolding.
In our ontology:
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Space is the relation between co-unfolding processes.
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Time is the dimension of unfolding itself.
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Contraction and dilation are not distortions of substance, but re-alignments of unfolding dimensions across relational boundaries.
Hence:
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Space contracts toward the centre of interaction because the topology of co-unfolding must reconfigure to preserve coherent relation.
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Time dilates for non-co-present systems because the rhythm of unfolding becomes less tightly coordinated.
These are not paradoxes; they are the semiotic consequences of holding meaning across non-identical rhythms of process.
3. Light as the Horizon of Frame Alignment
If light is the maximal relational synchrony possible across any construal, then it also sets the boundary beyond which relational unfolding becomes non-coherent:
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No system can ‘catch up’ with a light signal because it defines the relational maximum.
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No signal can propagate meaningfully faster, because beyond light-speed, processes cannot enter into mutual unfolding.
Light thus acts as a kind of semiotic event-horizon:
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Within it, unfolding remains relationally coherent.
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Beyond it, synchronisation fails — no shared construal is possible.
4. Boundary Conditions, Not Substances
Crucially, this model dispenses with the idea that light travels through space as a particle or wave. Instead, we say:
Light instantiates the outer limit of relational unfolding that can be coordinated across frames.
It is not substance, but constraint.
Not a messenger, but a relational threshold.
Toward Black Holes and Gravitational Frames
This reframing of light as a boundary condition has profound implications. It allows us to approach other limit conditions — such as black holes — not as singularities of matter, but as breakdowns in relational synchrony:
That will be the work of Post 3.
3 Relativity at the Edge — Black Holes, Event Horizons, and Gravitational Frames
In the previous two posts, we reframed velocity, space, and time not as absolute dimensions but as perspectival dimensions of unfolding processes — related by construal, not by substance. Light emerged not as a travelling entity but as a relational threshold, the outer boundary of coherent unfolding across systems. In this final post of the series, we bring these insights to bear on what may be the most enigmatic objects in modern cosmology: black holes.
1. What Is a Black Hole, Relationally Speaking?
In conventional terms, a black hole is a region of space where the gravitational pull is so strong that not even light can escape. It is defined by its event horizon, the boundary beyond which escape is impossible.
But in relational terms, this becomes something different:
A black hole is not a dense object at a location in space.
It is a collapse in the topology of unfolding — where the coherence of construal across frames breaks down.
The event horizon is not where “nothing escapes”; it is where relational construal can no longer synchronise across the boundary. No unfolding that crosses the horizon remains co-unfoldable with observers outside it.
2. Gravitational Fields as Topologies of Relation
Recall: in our ontology,
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Space is the topology of co-unfolding,
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Time is the dimension of unfolding itself,
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Mass is a construal of process density — not substance, but relational compression.
A gravitational field is thus:
A patterned asymmetry in the topology of unfolding, where time dilates and space contracts toward the centre of process compression.
The geodesic — the “straightest possible path” — is not bent by gravity. It is the unfolding of a process in a compressed topology. The “curvature” is not of space-time itself, but of the unfolding paths as they are constrained by the relational density of the field.
This lets us preserve the insight of general relativity while reframing its metaphysical assumptions.
3. The Event Horizon as Semiotic Boundary
Light, as we’ve seen, defines the maximal coherence of relational unfolding.
A black hole’s event horizon is thus the threshold beyond which light itself no longer synchronises across the inside–outside boundary. This means:
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From the outside, processes within the horizon cannot be relationally co-instantiated.
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From the inside, the external universe becomes relationally incoherent.
It is not a barrier made of energy or matter.
It is a rupture in relational topology — a failure of construal.
4. Time at the Edge
As one approaches a black hole:
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Time dilates for the infalling process (from the perspective of an external observer),
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But for the infalling system, its own unfolding continues without pause — only the relation to outside frames changes.
This highlights a key insight:
Dilation is perspectival. Unfolding continues. But mutual construal breaks down.
Relational ontology allows us to capture both truths at once:
5. Nothing “Falls Into” a Black Hole
One of the biggest conceptual missteps in popular accounts is the idea that an object “falls into” a black hole, crosses the event horizon, and vanishes inside. But in relational terms:
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There is no coherent construal of the inside from the perspective of outside observers.
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What “falls in” is only describable up to the limit of construal — that is, the event horizon.
Beyond this, there is no observer-relative meaning instance.
So we say:
Processes do not fall in; the relational field collapses.
Matter does not vanish; meaning disarticulates.
Conclusion: A Horizon of Meaning, Not a Pit of Matter
By reframing black holes not as things but as failures of construal across unfolding, we rescue relativity from its metaphysical paradoxes and ground it in meaning.
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No singularities are needed.
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No infinite densities are invoked.
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Only limits to the topology of co-instantiated unfolding — relational, perspectival, and semiotically grounded.
This offers a profound reimagination of gravity, light, time, and space — not as substances, but as construals of interactional possibility.
Reflective Coda: Horizons of Relation
In this series, we have reframed the architecture of special relativity and black holes through a relational ontology grounded in unfolding processes, perspectival construal, and semiotic coherence. We have resisted the temptation to treat light, time, space, and mass as foundational substances. Instead, we have treated them as relational construals — perspectives on how processes co-unfold and interrelate.
By shifting our attention:
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from substance to process,
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from thing to relation,
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and from objective description to perspectival construal,
we find new coherence at the heart of physical paradoxes.
Black holes no longer signal ontological breakdowns; they mark the limits of relational synchrony — where meaning cannot propagate, not because something is lost, but because the conditions of mutual unfolding no longer hold.
And light — once imagined as a particle, then as a wave — becomes instead a boundary condition for coherence, a measure of the maximal synchrony achievable between unfolding processes.
This is not a retreat from science. It is a deepening of its frame:
A science grounded in relation, not reification;
In unfolding, not underlying;
In meaning, not materialism.
We are no longer watching the universe from the outside.
We are participants in its unfolding — framing, construing, and orienting ourselves within the very processes we seek to understand.