Ontology · Physics · Memory
If physical laws can be thought of as a memory of the real, a question remains: where is that memory inscribed? The usual image answers spontaneously: in spacetime. But this image becomes insufficient as soon as one tries to think a more fundamental level. If spacetime itself is emergent, it cannot be the primary support of the memory of the real.
From object to relation
What comes first would therefore not be a theatre, but a structure of dependencies. Not things located somewhere, but events related by correlations, constraints and compatibilities. A physical object can be thought of as a local stability within a network of relations.
This shift moves us from a physics of the trajectory to a physics of coherence. In a relational physics, one asks which correlations can exist between events, and which structures can persist without destructive contradiction.
K_rel(W) = 0 — where K_rel denotes a global relational constraint operator and W the structure of authorised correlations between events. This equation does not claim to replace current physics. It functions as a condition of coherence among possible correlations.
Law as stabilised memory
In this perspective, law is no longer merely a rule applied to an already-constituted world. It becomes the stabilised form of the relations that allow a world to hold. Physical laws do not only describe how things move. They define which correlations are compatible with the persistence of the real as it is.
Habitability
Constraints are not only limits. They are also conditions of possibility. A world without stable relational constraints would not be a freer world — it would be an uninhabitable world, where no structure could persist long enough for anything to happen.
EPISTEMIC STATUS
This essay proposes a philosophical perspective on relational physics, not a demonstrated physical theory. Process-matrix frameworks in quantum causality provide a formal terrain where these questions can be posed precisely. The equation K_rel(W) = 0 is an exploratory coherence condition, not an established result.