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1. Radical Immanence: Without God, Without Multiverse
1.1. Genealogy of the theistic hypothesis: from the First Mover to the contemporary synthesis
The hypothesis of a creator developed through successive elaborations over two millennia, each responding to difficulties left open by prior versions. Understanding this genealogy means perceiving how the hypothesis structures its foundations and why each ontological anchorage crumbles under critical examination.
Aristotle: The Unmoved First Mover governs medieval metaphysics. The cosmos is in perpetual motion. Motion presupposes a moving cause. Nothing moves itself. Regressing through a series of moving causes, one cannot continue infinitely, therefore an unmoved mover exists, at absolute rest. The elegance is indisputable: every motion has a prior cause; the series converges upon an uncaused cause. The gain is universal explanation; the cost is transcendence, the first mover sits outside the cosmos, a categorical breach between eternal (cause) and temporal (effect).
However, general relativity operated a founding reconfiguration. Motion is no absolute property of the cosmos, there is no unambiguous answer to the question "is this object in motion?" without reference to a specific coordinate system. Motion is always relative to a chosen frame. In one frame, an object is at rest; in another, it moves at maximum velocity. Both descriptions are equally valid. Thus, there is no "motion in itself" as an intrinsic property requiring a first cause, there is a continuous reorganisation of relative positions of events within space-time fabric. This reorganisation is not caused by an external motor imparting motion. It emerges from the geometry of space-time itself, from the curvature induced by matter-energy distribution. Matter tells space how to curve; space tells matter how to move. There is no separate motor agent. Dynamics is an immanent property of space-time, not the result of a transcendent cause. Consequences for theistic genealogy are radical: the Aristotelian argument rests entirely on the assumption that motion requires explanation through an external cause. If motion is relational reorganisation within a geometry determined by matter-energy itself, there is no explanatory gap requiring divine filling. Cause is complete within the immanent system.
The second major formulation is Thomas Aquinas's Five Ways, a theological-philosophical systematisation dominating Christian thought for centuries. For origin, the way of efficient causality is crucial: nothing is the cause of itself (a performative logical impossibility). Every finite series of causes requires an uncaused cause as its ultimate ground. One cannot have an infinite ascending series, it would remain suspended without foundation. Therefore a first cause exists that is uncaused, causing all else. This uncaused cause is God.
The strength of the argument resides in its rigorous, seemingly irrefutable logical structure. To medieval Scholasticism, rejecting an uncaused cause meant accepting either infinite regress (impossible) or self-causation (contradictory). Yet quantum mechanics introduces a radically distinct causal regime invalidating this structure. A quantum fluctuation is a spontaneous variation in a field state emerging without a prior determinant cause. This does not mean "causality does not apply", it means classical causality (prior event univocally determining posterior event) vanishes in quantum regimes. Correlation exists: prior states constrain posterior possibilities. But there is no determination: multiple future trajectories are possible, and which actualises is not necessarily determined by prior states. The question "what caused the fluctuation?" presupposes a causal structure that quantum regimes do not admit. Causal series are not linear chains requiring convergence upon a transcendent foundation, they are local networks of correlated relationships.
Furthermore, quantum vacuum is no "absolute nothing", it is a structured material regime described by quantum formalism. The vacuum possesses a well-defined ground state, a spectrum of possible excitations, and symmetries governing dynamics. From such a regime, fluctuations emerge naturally without a prior cause because vacuum is an immanent material configuration, not a contingency requiring transcendent foundation.
Aquinas also distinguishes being by essence (God, pure being whose essence is existence) from being by participation (everything else receiving being from another). Yet participation rests on the assumption of a fixed essence defining each thing. Contemporary material analysis dissolves this: there is no permanent essence, no "true nature" persisting through transformation; there are only transitory configurations emerging under specific constraints and transforming continuously as constraints reconfigure.
Newton: The Newtonian revolution dispensed with Aristotle's continuous mover, the law of inertia establishes that a body persists in rest or uniform motion without an sustaining cause. The first mover argument lost its anchorage. Yet Newton reintroduced God via another path: absolute space as sensorium Dei, an omnipresent medium through which God apprehends all cosmic events simultaneously. Newton's theology is not cosmogonic (making God a creator of matter) but ontological: absolute space exists because God exists, and space's infinity, homogeneity, and immutability directly reflect divine attributes. Inertia functions because absolute space sustains it; absolute space sustains itself because God guarantees it.
General relativity dissolved this anchorage at its root. Space is no pre-existing container with absolute properties, it is a relational configuration determined by matter-energy distribution. There is no immutable background sustaining inertia; inertia is a property of the local gravitational field, and the field is determined by matter. The sensorium Dei vanishes without leaving a gap: Einstein's equations close without recourse to a transcendent entity guaranteeing geometric framework.
Paley and Fine-Tuning: The watch exhibits structure, the watchmaker is a necessary cause. Analogously, the universe exhibits order; hence a creator exists. The contemporary version intensifies this: fundamental constants appear "tuned" with extraordinary precision (parts in \(10^{20}\)). Were they different, structure would be impossible, matter would not form, atoms would not exist, observers would not emerge. Fine-tuning appears a "statistical miracle".
The fundamental error in the argument is logical-probabilistic. One implicitly assumes a well-defined probability distribution over the space of possible values for fundamental constants. Without such a distribution, the assertion that observed values are "surprisingly improbable" is meaningless. What is the a priori probability of the cosmological constant being positive vs. negative? Physics supplies no answer. There is no reason to suppose a uniform distribution, distribution is unknown or non-existent as a well-defined object. Thus "improbable" loses rigorous sense.
The weak anthropic principle dissolves the difficulty completely: it is trivially unsurprising that where observers exist, constants permit observers. Observers are selected by existence in this universe, there are no observers in universes where observers are impossible. This is a selection logic, not a design argument. Furthermore, research in eternal inflation and string landscape suggests constants derive from deeper theoretical structure, as different vacua in string theory correspond to different field/constant combinations. This replaces external creator agency with deeper material structure.
Genealogy converges upon an invariant pattern: in each epoch, Aristotle, Aquinas, Newton, Paley, the creator hypothesis anchors in a gap unfulfilled by contemporary physics. The first mover fills uncaused motion; the uncaused cause fills unfounded causal series; sensorium Dei fills unsustained space; the watchmaker fills unorganised order. In each case, the gap was real within available conceptual frameworks, and in each case, subsequent reconfiguration dissolved the gap without recourse to transcendence. The creator was not refuted by contrary arguments; it became unnecessary through transformation of the field of intelligibility.
1.2. Material sufficiency: cosmology without a creator
Contemporary physics supplies a coherent framework for understanding origin without a creator entity. The creator hypothesis becomes ontologically dispensable.
The first fundamental shift is rejecting the question "before the Big Bang" as malformed, not because it is ineffable, but because embedded temporal assumptions are artefacts of pre-relativistic cosmology. In Newtonian thought, time is an absolute dimension wherein all occurs, "before" and "after" exist equally, alongside a zero moment where the universe "begins to exist." Asking "what caused the Big Bang?" presupposes temporal structure: causes precede effects. This was coherent for a Newtonian cosmos where time was pre-existing infrastructure.
In the Hartle-Hawking model, the universe possesses a finite, closed geometry, like a sphere, finite in temporal extent yet without a temporal boundary. There is no zero point. Time emerges as a geometric coordinate. Asking "what was before the Big Bang?" is like asking "what lies north of the North Pole?"
A further shift is the reinterpretation of negative gravitational energy. Vilenkin demonstrated that the universe may possess precisely zero total energy. Matter and radiation possess positive energy (motion, mass, field). But gravitational energy, due to gravitational interactions between constituents, is negative energy. Thanks to this compensation, the total sum can be zero. A universe of zero total energy requires no creation, it violates no energy conservation if emerging from vacuum. Material immanence is sufficient; it dispenses with external agency; it requires no prior cause supplying energy for origination.
The zero-total-energy argument has, however, a conceptual prerequisite requiring clarification: what is the quantum vacuum from which the universe emerges? Traditional rejection of cosmology without a creator reposes frequently upon the notion that "even vacuum is something, hence must have a cause." The contemporary response is that vacuum is no absence, it is a quantised field with structure, symmetries, and possible configurations. Vacuum possesses zero-point energy, excitables modes, spontaneous phase transitions. More fundamentally: there is no state "below" vacuum. Vacuum is the primary material regime, the operational base of the observable universe. Asking "where did vacuum come from?" malforms the question: any entity offered as vacuum's origin would have to be more primitive than it, yet quantum vacuum is more primitive than any entity, entities are field excitations, not field substrates. The notion of "absolute nothing", complete absence of structure, symmetry, field, or law, is a conceptual incoherence. Absolute nothing is no physical state; it is a logical fiction summoned by theological tradition to grant maximum reach to cosmological argument. Once quantum vacuum is characterised with mathematical rigour, the fiction dissolves: there is no state below vacuum where a divinity could exist or operate.
It is critical to comprehend the relocation of this argument in Prigogine and self-organisation. Ilya Prigogine analysed thermally open systems far from equilibrium exchanging energy with an exterior. In such systems, small fluctuations amplify into spontaneous order, dissipative structures. Order emerges from instability when a continuous energy flux arrives from without. This would seem to require an external entity supplying energy continuously. Prigogine generalised this in complex systems theory, suggesting cosmic order might emerge analogously.
This reading relocates the argument completely: in a truly immanent universe (without an exterior receiving energy), that which Prigogine termed "energy coming from outside" is merely the continuous reorganisation of internal differences. There is no flux from a transcendent domain sustaining open systems. There is only a material field that, in certain regimes of complexity and density of constraints, reorganises itself, generating patterns and conformities emerging immanently. Self-organisation requires no external, it is the immanent reorganisation of differences.
This relocation requires a triple differentiation to avoid confusion with Prigogine's original position. For Prigogine, the engine of order is dissipation in an open system, energy flux from the exterior amplifies local fluctuations generating structure. The scope is isolable systems receiving continuous energy from an external reservoir. Irreversibility is simultaneously constitutive (from the perspective of the open system constructing an immanent history) and statistical (from the perspective of the total universe where microscopic fluctuations govern macroscopic transitions). In each of these terms, relocation inverts direction. The engine is not dissipation requiring exterior flux, it is material excess without fixed destination, reorganisation of internal differences already present. The scope is not partial open systems, it is a cosmos without exterior, where all reorganisation is immanent and all complexity emerges from tensions of matter itself. Irreversibility has no dual status, it is constitutive of the immanent real, not a statistical sign of degradation imported from without. This differentiation does not invalidate Prigogine, it retains the core of his intuition: that order and complexity require no external agency. It radicalises the argument, however, removing the last stronghold: not only does cosmic order require no creator; it does not even require a "supply" of energy arriving from transcendence. Consequently, the creator hypothesis becomes not merely undetectable or improbable, it becomes logically dispensable. Occam's razor applies here not as an epistemological principle (preferring the simplest explanation) but as an ontological consequence: the hypothesis is unnecessary because material sufficiency is complete. The philosophical question shifts register: no longer "who created?" but "how does this immanent regime devoid of foundation and purpose persist in generating complexity?"
Two complementary and necessary faces establish complete material sufficiency. The first face is removing the obstacle, demonstrating there is no ontological necessity forcing a creator's existence. Every theistic argument has been unseated at its conceptual foundations. The classical question "what caused the Big Bang?" dissolves because embedded linear temporal assumptions reveal themselves as artefacts of Newtonian cosmology. Classical causality does not apply in quantum regimes where fluctuations emerge without prior determination. Efficient causal series are not necessary linear chains; they are local relationship networks dispensing with transcendent grounding. There is no explanatory vacuum requiring divine filling. Obstacle removal shows the creator is no mandatory response to any theoretical difficulty.
The second face is constructive filling, demonstrating that material processes described within contemporary formalism generate observable structures without transcendence and without external agency. The universe as observed, with billions of galaxies, cosmic background radiation, and continuous evolution over \(\sim 13.8\) billion years through distinct matter/energy regimes, is explainable via immanent quantum dynamics, far-from-equilibrium self-organisation, and fluctuation amplification under material constraints. No gap requires creator invocation. It is not merely that a creator is unnecessary (first face); there is a complete material explanation (second face). Material sufficiency has both faces intact: removal of theoretical obstacle and constructive filling of previously empty space.
1.3. Dissolution of the Multiverse: symbolic iteration, not ontology
If material sufficiency dissolves the creator, an immediate objection arises: if the universe began and its origin is contingent, why not infinite universes? World proliferation, the multiverse, offers itself as an alternative response replacing the single figure of creator and universe with infinite plurality. The proposition seems liberating: instead of a single, inexplicable origin, one reaps the advantages of an unlimited set where every material possibility actualises. Analysis demonstrates, however, that the multiverse does not resolve the fundamental difficulty, it merely displaces it to successive abstraction levels, confusing symbolic iteration capacity with ontological multiplication of material realities.
Four proposals circulate in contemporary debate. Lewis's modal realism asserts possible worlds exist literally, not merely as alternative descriptions, but as fully instanced ontological realities in an abstract space of possibilities. The cost is immediate: the transition from "possible" to "real" remains unjustified. The operator transforming symbolic iterability into material existence is not supplied. "Possible" is an inscriptive category, designating what can be described, what is coherent within a formal framework. Asserting that every coherent description corresponds to an existing world projects a property of symbolic medium onto material reality. Logical coherence does not generate ontological existence. Possible worlds are symbolic fictions, artefacts of the inscriptive regime's combinatory capacity, not independent realities. Leibniz, formulating possible worlds as universes God contemplates before choosing the best, inaugurated the structure Lewis radicalises: an abstract space of possibilities where each coherent configuration constitutes a world. The difference between Leibniz and Lewis is that Leibniz recognised the fictional status of unactualised worlds, existing in divine intellect, not reality. Lewis eliminated the divine filter and declared all real, without supplying the ontological operator justifying the transition. The result is symbolic proliferation presented as ontology, precisely the error identified by analysing constitutive contingency: contingency is no defect to be plugged by multiplying alternatives; it is a property of the existing singular real.
Everett's many-worlds interpretation starts from a different premise: each quantum measurement triggers a wavefunction bifurcation, generating branches where every possible result actualises. Multiplication is now seemingly material, no longer a mere catalogue of possibilities. The branch, however, is an artefact of state vector decomposition, not an entity with independent existence. Choosing a decomposition basis is an inscriptive choice, the same wavefunction decomposes into infinite distinct modes according to mathematical basis adopted. Which branch is "real"? All corresponding to a possible decomposition? None, given the wavefunction is universal? World proliferation is a proliferation of alternative formalisms, each as legitimate as others within internal theory logic. What multiplies is intelligibility, not material reality.
Linde and Guth's eternal inflation offers a third pattern. Inflationary regions continue eternally in distinct locations, each generating a bubble universe with distinct fundamental constants. Multiplication is now seemingly produced by genuine cosmological dynamics, not by modal decree or formalism artefact. For each universal bubble within the inflationary ensemble, however, the original question persists untouched: whence comes inflationary dynamics itself? The energy pattern feeding inflation, field equations governing it, initial inflaton field conditions, all are equally contingent. Multiplying universes does not resolve the difficulty; it displaces it to a higher abstraction level.
Finally, string landscape offers a scale argument: string theory equation solutions support roughly \(10^{500}\) distinct vacua, each corresponding to a possible universe with distinct constants. Proliferation is allegedly derived from fundamental theory. The landscape, however, is a description of a symbolic formalism's solution space, a map of intelligible possibilities within a mathematical framework. Describing \(10^{500}\) alternative solutions describes \(10^{500}\) universes permitted by theory, not \(10^{500}\) universes existing ontologically. The landscape enumerates what is legible within an inscriptive regime; it multiplies no material realities.
Three arguments converge upon all variants. Regression is the first: for each universe in the ensemble, bubble, branch, or vacuum, the question of origin persists unanswered. The multiverse does not eliminate contingency, it expands it infinitely. Probability without distribution is the second: asserting "in an infinite multiverse, some region will inevitably possess adequate constants" presupposes a well-defined distribution over the set that no one supplies. Without distribution, "improbable" has no meaning. Ontological dissolution is the third: possible worlds, wavefunction branches, cosmological bubbles, and string vacua are symbolic constructions, legibility regimes, mathematical objects, theoretical decomposition artefacts. Confusing unlimited symbolic iterability with material multiplication is the fundamental error.
The multiverse is genuine infinite proliferation, of intelligibilities, not realities. It displaces origin through successive abstraction: instead of explaining one universe, one explains an ensemble; instead of justifying constants, one enumerates those permitted by theory. Each step is legitimate as an operation within an inscriptive regime. No step resolves the question of origin. Contingency is no defect to be dissolved by multiplication. It is a constitutive property of material reality that no successive abstraction can eliminate.
1.4. Radical immanence: without an exterior, hence without a creator
The conclusion now converges: if the real is a field of immanence, without an external position, then no entity can have "created" the universe.
Thesis in form: If X creates the universe, X sits outside the universe. However, the universe is an immanent totality, there is no outside. Therefore, there is no X.
In theistic tradition, participatory causality functions thus: the universe is contingent (non-necessary), hence depends on a necessary cause. Dependence is described: as a book depends on a writer, reality depends on God. But this simile presupposes a fundamental structure: a domain of entities radically distinct from the creator agent. Radical immanence dissolves this. There is no contingency circuit closing while leaving an exterior of non-contingency. There is only continuous reorganisation.
Spinoza establishes the decisive intuition: Deus sive Natura, God is identical to Nature. A single substance is cause of itself (causa sui), independent of an exterior. All things are expressions of attributes of this substance. The gain: dissolution of transcendence, no separate transcendent creator exists. There is only immanence, everything is an expression of a single substance.
Yet Spinoza preserves structures rejected here: unifying substance, geometric necessity, necessary expression of attributes. The distinction is precise: radical immanence is preserved, there is no outside, all is a continuous field, , yet unifying substance and necessity are rejected. In this reading, there is no single substance, no necessity governing reorganisation, no essential expression. The creator vanishes not only because there is no external position, but because there is no necessary structure that could organise "creation."
Crucially: radical immanence is not temporal eternity. It is not that the real "always" existed through infinite moments. It is that "duration" is a category that does not apply. Time is an emergent regime, emerging when material differences reorganise creating sequence where before and after acquire meaning. Continuous processuality exists without a "process" enduring or a "duration" measuring it. Immanence is pure transformation without a persistent substrate and without external time measuring it.
Transition Aphorism: "The question does not vanish when the creator is dissolved, it transforms: no longer asking who made it, but how that which needs no making sustains itself. And the answer is: the question is malformed. Sustenance is a metaphor stolen from worlds crafted by artisans. The real is not made; it is a continuous reorganisation of material differences without an exterior, without a foundation, without an agent, without an intending governance. Immanence needs no sustenance because there is no outside."
At this point, all four theistic figures have been unseated through rigorous analysis. The creator falls when it is understood there is no external position from which to create, immanence renders creator agency conceptually incoherent. The foundation falls when it is understood there is no deeper supporting level, no substance reposing beneath transformations, merely continuous reorganisation of differences. The centre falls when it is understood the universe is no totalisable object, no universal geometry axis, no causality convergence point unifying it. The alternative (multiverse) falls when symbolic proliferation is recognised as non-identical to ontological multiplication of material realities.
What remains: the real in a regime of radical immanence. Material configurations in continuous reorganisation, without an exterior sustaining them, without transcendence originating them, without a centre unifying them, without a replica escaping them. Differences recombining, rhythms modulating, couplings remaking, constraints channelling without completely determining. No beginning, because beginning is a symbolic category inapplicable to the pre-symbolic. No foundation, because the support question vanishes when support presupposes exteriority, external support, transcendent position. No imposed meaning, because meaning is a symbolic attribute, emerging only where language and interpretation exist.
This is the horizon of a cosmogony without myth. It replaces conventional narratives not with a truer alternative narrative, it dissolves narrative necessity itself as an adequate form for describing origin. Narrative presupposes a structure that the material real does not admit: a before differentiated from an after, a transition point with defined meaning, a plot where figures act intentionally according to a plan. The real offers none of this. The real offers neither creator, foundation, nor imposed destiny. It offers radical reorientation: viewing the universe not as something needing making, as an object that might not have existed had no one intelligently created it, but as continuous dynamics where each material conformation is a necessary result (in the sense of unfolding from constraints emerging from that configuration) of prior configurations and produces future transformations, in a chain without an initial point, imposed external meaning, programmed destiny, or teleology. There is only what is: material immanence reorganising perpetually, differences modulating, processes unfolding, a continuum without transcendent foundation or cosmic telos. This is sufficient for understanding origin.
2. Radical Relationism: Without Foundation
2.1. Genealogy of foundationalism
The search for a foundation is as persistent in the history of philosophy as the demand that thought be thinkable. Not because the search is virtuous, but because the demand for logical consistency carries the suspicion that, at some point, the chain of justifications must halt. If it does not halt, one falls into infinite regress. If it halts at an arbitrary point, the legitimacy of that halt is questioned. The sole exit recognised by tradition was discovering a term in the chain justifying itself, a foundation independent of anything external.
Parmenides anticipated this entire structure. Being is; non-being is not. From this simple proposition sprouts the Western obsession with the one and the permanent. If foundation is Being (and non-being is nothing), Being is unitary, immobile, eternal. Why? Because difference would imply non-being (that which is not this non-being would be another, hence other-being, hence partially non-being). Multiplicity implies incompleteness, hence dependence, hence non-foundation. Parmenidean foundation is radically monistic: all that is, is one, and that one does not change. Observable multiplicity is appearance, not reality. It is an argument of extraordinary logical force: if non-being is impossible, any change (requiring passage from non-being to being) is impossible; any multiplicity (requiring each thing not to be others) is impossible. The sole path avoiding contradiction is embracing absolute immobility and absolute uniqueness. Parmenides drew radical consequences from this logic.
Parmenides' silence on multiplicity is, paradoxically, his greatest utterance. He did not explicitly reject appearances; rather, he named them a separate realm, the world of opinion. Naming the separation between true Being and illusory appearance, he charted the future ruin of Western philosophy. For if Being is one, immobile, and eternal, while all given to experience is multiple, mobile, and transitory, how can the transitory be real? The Western obsession with true reality hidden "beneath" appearances is born precisely here, born from the logical necessity that true Being cannot be contaminated by contradiction. What Parmenides called doxa (opinion) transformed in subsequent history into a series of duplications: appearance/reality, subject/object, knowledge/being. All successors attempt to reconcile these duplications, and all fail precisely because duplication originates from an insoluble presupposition: the impossibility of non-being. The price of this logical elegance is radically separating the real (one, eternal, immobile) from experience (multiple, transitory, dynamic), a bifurcation traversing all subsequent metaphysics.
Descartes does not reject this impulse; he redesigns it. Foundation is no longer Parmenidean Being, but the thinking subject. Cogito, ergo sum. The demand for certainty, for indubitability, renders this the sole valid starting point. Everything can be doubted, except that something is doubting. This movement is revolutionary in fruit, yet structurally conservative: it maintains the search for a self-justifying first term. The gain is clear: thought conquers the right to demand evidence, accepting no external authorities.
What Descartes conquered was freedom of thought against external authorities. What he failed to perceive was that the price of this freedom is inescapable circularity. Radical doubt is revolutionary in effect: questioning everything, even mathematics and sensory evidence. Arriving at the cogito, motion halts. Why? Because doubt itself presupposes doubting. To doubt that I think, I must already be doubting, doubt is its own object. It is refined self-reference, not an exit from regress. Cartesian foundation is thus a point founding nothing external to itself, merely founding itself, hence unfounding. The "I" of the cogito is not discovered by thought; it is presupposed. Radical doubt does not touch the "I" because the "I" is the condition of doubt itself, not its result. Then the problem of God aggravates everything. Descartes requires God to guarantee that clear and distinct ideas correspond to external reality. How does he know he has a clear idea of God? Because it is clear and distinct. Perfect circularity, brilliantly executed yet formally flawed. God's existence is demonstrated by the criterion God is supposed to validate. The cost is double: circularity (requiring God to guarantee clear ideas correspond to reality, while God is demonstrated by clear ideas) and insidious subjectivism (presupposing a thinking "I", a constituted subject whose existence is a starting point, not a conclusion). What Descartes failed to see was that he sought a foundation in a structure (thinking subject) inaccessible without presupposition.
Leibniz addresses the problem differently. His principle of sufficient reason insists nothing occurs without a reason. Every fact has a cause; every cause has a reason. However, if the causal chain is infinite, complete reason is never attained. Therefore an uncaused cause must exist, an ultimate reason, God, or simply the Foundation. Leibniz's advance is recognising foundation as logically necessary because any explanation presupposes answering "why?" Yet this question presupposes there is a reason for something to be rather than nothing, presupposing the principle of reason. A brilliant metaphysical trap: making the principle of reason appear the condition of rationality itself. It is a presupposition, not a derivation. The principle is not "discovered", it is imposed as a legibility condition. And a presupposition governing all explanation cannot be explained by terms it governs. Pure circle elevated to cosmic necessity: the universe embodies sufficient reason because God chose the best of possible worlds, where everything has reason, nothing is arbitrary. Pre-established harmony elegance: each monad reflects the entire causal series. In fact, a collapse of the problem into religious background.
Quantum description significantly weakens this framework. Radioactive decay possesses no deterministic cause: merely probability. No "sufficient reason" in the classical sense explains why a nucleus decayed at this instant rather than another. Statistical conformity exists (decay constant), yet no strong causality in Leibniz's sense. The chain of sufficient reasons interrupts in material indetermination, not transcendent Foundation. The real admits events without prior sufficient reason, not through deep ignorance, but because indetermination is a property of the material regime. This signals that Leibniz's demand for sufficient reason rests upon an unjustified expectation: that everything must have reason because reason is the condition of intelligibility.
Kant displaces the problem entirely. Foundation is no property of the external real, but a condition of the knowing subject. Space and time are no properties of things-in-themselves, but a priori forms of human intuition. Causality is no object property, but a category of understanding. Foundation is removed from the world and installed in knowledge. Paradox: this appeared to resolve Parmenidean bifurcation, the real would be as it is independently of our forms; foundation is foundation merely of experience, not things-in-themselves. Gain: recognising inscriptive regimes constraint legibility. Fatal cost: placing foundation in the subject, when the limit belongs to the inscriptive regime relative to the material real. It is not the subject constituting space; it is the inscriptive regime rendering visible only certain spatial differences, leaving others undescribed.
Kant does something subtle. He recognises there can be no foundation in the exterior (thing-in-itself) because knowledge passes through constraining a priori forms. Solution: placing foundation in the subject. Space and time cease to be external properties and become intuition structures. Causality ceases to be a world link and becomes a mental synthesis category. Apparent gain: liberation from prior metaphysical dogmatism. External reality may be as it wishes; foundation is merely of possible knowledge. Hidden cost: false displacement. Kant presumes the limit resides in the subject when it resides in the inscriptive regime. It is not human mind structure constraining space knowledge; it is the structure of any inscriptive regime rendering certain differences legible and others undescribed. An inscriptive regime is that which description captures, not exclusive to human subjects. A quantum measurement apparatus operates under an inscriptive regime without a transcendental subject. It requires merely differentiation: marked differences vs. uncaptured differences. Kant brought the limit question closer, but mislocated its explanation.
Heidegger confronts this genealogy with a radical metaphysical question: if foundation justifies, does it possess a foundation? If yes, infinite regress. If no, if foundation has no foundation, then Grund reveals itself as Abgrund. Foundation is abyss. This is the sharpest question tradition posed. Heidegger resounds it through Western metaphysics: from Parmenides to Leibniz, via Descartes and Kant, the principle of reason was never questioned. Merely presupposed. How can it be founded? It cannot, according to Heidegger, for any foundation of the principle of reason uses the principle itself. Inescapable circularity.
Heidegger sees further than predecessors: sufficient reason is no auto-evident truth, but a presupposition. And unfounded presupposition is, by definition, abyss. His question is sharp: if everything needs reason, what is the reason of the principle of reason? No reason exists, merely its imposition as a condition of thinkability. This Heidegger names Abgrund, groundless-ground. A brilliant diagnosis dissolving Leibniz's chain. If the principle of reason cannot be founded (since any foundation presupposes it), all search for foundation rests upon unvalidated presupposition. The abyss is no metaphorical cave, it is a logical structure: a demand unfulfillable in its own terms. Heidegger then errs by elevating the abyss to metaphysical mystery, as if Being hid itself, generating the abyss through withdrawal. Placing emptiness in a dimension beyond the world.
However, Heidegger locates the abyss in Being, a metaphysical totality hiding itself. The real is not so. No Being hides; no Being horizon sustains regress. There is, instead, the relational structure of matter itself. The abyss is no mystical property of metaphysical totality; it is a property of the material real's relationism regime. The correct displacement: abyss is no property of transcendent Being; it is a property of material relational structure. No relation is a foundation of itself, every relation supposes relating terms that do not exist prior to relation. They are what they are in and through relation. This is physics, not Being. No relation is logically prior to another; no particle exists by "origin right"; no dimension is "true" while others are "apparent". Thus true emptiness is no Being concealment, but simple absence of privilege: any network node sustains the entire network, and any node is sustained by the entire network. Where Heidegger sees Abgrund as Being concealment, one sees fundamental relationism as absence of base, not because a base is hidden, but because base is a concept inapplicable to the real in itself. It is a symbolic fiction of an inscriptive regime seeking "beneath" the observable a deeper, truer "level". The real hides nothing: it is precisely this, relationism without concealment, relationism needing no mystery to be complete.
2.2. Relationism at the fundamental level: physical evidence
Five material constraints converge to indicate that relationism is no superficial theoretical category, but a constitutive regime at the real's most fundamental level. None, isolated, is conclusive. Together, they form a coherent pattern disproving foundationalist presuppositions.
First: Relational Quantum Mechanics (Rovelli). Copenhagen orthodoxy asserts the wavefunction is a probability calculation tool, not a real description. The real "collapses" when measured. What is measured? System properties. How is property defined? Conventionally: a characteristic of a thing independent of anything external. In quantum contexts, no independent properties exist. Electron spin is no electron property; it is the result of interaction between electron and measuring apparatus. Momentum, position, energy, none exists "in itself"; all emerge in specific relations between interacting systems.
Property is materialised relation. Electron position is no "electron position", it is conformity between electron and measuring apparatus. Alter the apparatus, alter the relation, alter the information termed "position". This does not mean an electron is an apparatus artefact, it means property is always a relational aspect. This destroys the subject-predicate structure assumed by prior philosophy. "Object possesses properties" was always presupposed. Here property reveals itself as relation, no object exists prior to property possessing it. What exists is material conformity between systems, appearing as a property of one term when rendered legible in a specific inscriptive regime. Rovelli articulates this: no quantum system possesses an absolute state. Only relative states exist. An electron has spin "up" relative to a vertical Stern-Gerlach apparatus; spin "right" relative to a 45-degree rotated apparatus. Neither state is "truer". Both are equally real, equally relative. The "measurement problem" dissolves. No absolute electron state exists prior to measurement. State belongs to the pair (electron + apparatus). This does not mean the electron vanishes without apparatus, it means properties through which we know the electron are relational properties.
Second: Quantum Holism. Bell (1964) demonstrated that in two correlated (entangled) particles, correlations violate inequalities necessarily valid if each particle possessed independent properties. Aspect (1982) confirmed experimentally: correlations cannot be explained by local hidden variables. The meaning is demolishing for atomism. Entangled particles cannot be described as things with own properties, merely as constituents of a pair state. Describing electron A in isolation yields incomplete or contradictory descriptions. Pair state is fundamental; part state is derivative and inadequate. Relation is ontologically prior to terms. No prior terms exist that subsequently relate; relationism permits identifying partial terms in specific contexts.
"Two entangled systems" is misleading language. A single system exists in an entangled state. The pair state is no sum of state-A plus state-B. It is a singular entity manifesting as result correlations. Isolating A does violence to state reality. The true object is the pair. Implications for atomism are devastating: if fundamental reality admits entanglement, "atoms" (isolated, indivisible things) fail as basic reality descriptions. Basic reality is entangled relationism, whence pseudo-atoms emerge in specific contexts. This approximation belongs to measurement regimes, not the real. The fundamental real is holistic, networks of correlated systems. Holism is ontological, not merely epistemological.
Third: Bootstrap (Relational Self-Consistency). Chew (S-matrix theory) argued no fundamental particles exist from which others derive. A particle network exists constituting mutually. Each particle is what it is because it interacts consistently with all others. Were a particle property slightly different, all others would re-adjust. Particle properties are determined by entire network self-consistency.
A particle exists because its properties (mass, spin, charge, interaction mode) are consistent with properties of all other particles. The network sustains itself because each node sustains it. Absolute mutual interdependence: particles are no universe building blocks, but positions in a self-sustaining interaction network. Bootstrap is self-elevation without external support. Pure relationism: no term possesses intrinsic properties; all properties function as network position. The network has no external foundation because it is circular, terms constituting terms.
Fourth: Matter-Geometry Codetermination. Einstein's equation equates space-time curvature to matter-energy content. No absolute space-time (Newton) functions as an inert container. Geometry and matter codetermine. Mass distribution alters geometry; altered geometry constrains mass movement. Neither is the other's foundation.
Curvature is no property space "has"; it is how mass-energy distribution renders itself legibly geometric. Trajectory is no conformity to pre-existing "geometric instruction"; it is how a body responds to material energy gradients space embodies. Container is product of content distribution. No dual layer (space + thing); a single relational layer where material differentiations and geometric conformations are faces of the same reality. Absolute space is an inscriptive fiction. Geometry emerges from material configuration.
Fifth: Loop Quantum Gravity (Ashtekar, Smolin, Rovelli). Space-time is no primitive entity, but a product of deeper quantum relations. Spin networks, quantum relation combinations, are more fundamental than space-time points. Geometry (distance, shape, volume) is an emergent network property.
Basic reality is not space-time "points" or pre-existing "fields". It is correlated quantum event networks, spin networks. Geometry is an emergent property. Spin networks generate geometry. No neutral substrate exists, no "space" prior to quantum relations. Space is a secondary construction appearing in macro, coarse-grained views of quantum networks. Continuity is a statistical product of fundamental discretisation. Space founds nothing; it emerges from everything.
These five material constraints point to the same conclusion: relationism is constitutive of the material real. Atomism's error was presupposing multiplicity and relation were secondary. They are primary. "Things" are secondary constructions of inscriptive regimes isolating degrees of freedom. Multiple valid descriptions (wave mechanics, matrix mechanics, Feynman path integrals) are distinct perspectives upon the same fundamental relationism.
2.3. Without foundation, not without consistency: constitutive circularity
An operational distinction is decisive: absence of foundation is no ontological nihilism. It does not mean the universe is chaotic or arbitrary. It means consistency rests upon internal compatibility of relations, not an external base.
Think of a self-sustaining network of internal tensions, a spiderweb suspended in air without a floor. Each thread possesses specific tension; each junction redistributes loads. The structure maintains itself because each part sustains tensions compatible with all others. If a thread breaks, the structure readjusts. The web rests on nothing, yet supports complex tensions.
Structures require no foundation; they can be relational, emergent, processual. Order emerging from circularity is robust. Gravity is a consistent relation between mass distribution and curvature. Physical constants vary within microscopic limits because defining relationism is robust. Material constraints are internal limits to relationism structuring. Persisting structures possess internal logic sustaining them, order without transcendent foundation.
Anti-teleology is essential: relational consistency is contingent. It could have configured otherwise. Physical constants and dimensionalities are cosmic history accidents, not hidden desiderata. No underlying plan exists.
2.4. Transition: If there is no foundation, there is no centre
If the real is a relational network without a base, no node possesses privilege. Absence of foundation drags with it absence of a centre. No node is "more fundamental" or "truer". No scale is privileged, a quark is no truer than an electron, a particle no truer than a field. All are relationism organisation modes.
In general relativity, no absolute rest frame exists, all observers are equally valid. Decentralisation is complete: symmetry obtains across all observers, points, scales, and relation modes. No region is ontologically denser. No scale is "truer".
Causality transforms: no cause (thing causing) exists prior to relationism, merely relations where systems respond to adjacent properties. Co-simultaneous codetermination replaces linear causality at fundamental scales. "Before" and "after" are emergent temporal regime constructions.
Transition Aphorism: "The real does not rest upon anything; it sustains itself in the entanglement of everything, a web floating without a base because the base is the illusion of one who seeks a floor where there is only a web."
3. Total Decentralisation and the Bridge-Question
3.1. Genealogy of cosmic centralisation
The persistence of the centre marks cosmological thought as a structural fixation. Archaic cosmologies built the cosmos around an axis, a sacred point connecting visible with invisible, Axis Mundi (Mount Meru, Jerusalem, Delphi). Proximity to the centre signified proximity to order's source, reality's ground.
Aristotle and Ptolemy formalised this in geometry: immovable Earth at the centre, wrapped in concentric celestial spheres. Geocentrismo was explicit ontological architecture: geometric centre = physical centre = ontological centre = theological centre. Hierarchy depended on this: closer to Earth = greater imperfection; farther = greater perfection.
Copernicus decentralised Earth, yet displaced the centre to the Sun (heliocentrism), preserving centralisation logic. Newton dissolved centre geometry (infinite absolute space), yet solar system dynamics remained functionally centred around the Sun.
Einstein offered the final answer: general covariance, physical laws take the same form in all reference frames. No privileged frame exists. Space-time metric varies with curvature. No fixed structure, no privileged point, no centre exists. Centrality is a symbolic regime artefact, not a material real property.
3.2. Material decentralisation: the cosmological principle
Three observational pillars establish the impossibility of a cosmic centre:
- Homogeneity: On scales exceeding \(\sim 100\text{ megaparsecs}\), average matter density is indistinguishable (Sloan Digital Sky Survey). No systematic density concentration exists. A centre would require a radial density gradient; none exists.
- Isotropy: The universe appears identical in all directions from any point (Planck 2018 CMB data). Fluctuation amplitudes are less than 1 part in \(10^5\). If a centre existed, directional asymmetry would obtain. Universalised centrality is its dissolution: if every point is at the centre, no point is.
- Space Expansion: Universe expansion is no explosion of matter into pre-existing empty space, but space-time expansion itself (Hubble 1929, De Sitter). No central explosion point exists; expansion occurs at every point simultaneously.
Local matter concentrations (galaxies, clusters, black holes) do not contradict acentricity. They are emergent functional focalisations generated by local constraints (gravitational collapse, radiation pressure). They are local operational centres, not ontological foundations.
3.3. The fourth narcissistic wound and ontological decentralisation
Freud catalogued three narcissistic wounds:
- Copernican (geographical): Earth is not the cosmic centre.
- Darwinian (biological): Humanity is not a special creation.
- Psychoanalytic (psychological): The ego does not govern its own house.
A fourth narcissistic wound exists, more radical: centrality does not exist as an ontological category. No level of the real is privileged. No solid base or ultimate anchor exists. Material relations organise in acentric networks where each level conditions others simultaneously without ultimate sovereignty.
Spinoza perceived this, refusing a founding substance (Deus sive Natura). One reality, infinite modes of being, none more fundamental than another.
Knowledge is a situated perspective achieving operational coherence, a situational strength, not a transcendent divine view.
3.4. Bridge-Question
Four dissolutions converge at this threshold:
- No founding God: Immanent material operation without transcendent will.
- No Foundation: Circular relationality without non-relational substrate.
- No Centre: Distributive, acentric organisation without ontological priority.
- No Multiverse: Contingent, singular real without symbolic multiverse replicas.
These four negations define what the universe is: material sufficiency, relational circularity, distributive acentrisme, contingent singularity.
A question emerges that cannot be avoided: If the real operates without inscription, under pure material constraints, how do the conditions permitting inscription emanate from it? How does an acentric material field, without a plan or foundation, generate legibility regimes?
This is the bridge-question opening the subsequent step: not what happens to the universe, but how a material regime without inscription generates the conditions of its own legibility.
Closing Aphorism: There is no centre because there is no fixed point around which the real would gravitate, there is only an acentric web reorganising itself without pause or term.