# A Maxwell Universe – PART III — Fragmentation ## Fragmentation The point-mass framework, extended by patches rather than replaced, produced a physics divided against itself. Each major theory preserved part of the Newtonian intuition while abandoning other parts, resulting in a set of mutually incompatible descriptions of the world. ### Classical Mechanics Classical mechanics kept Newton’s ontology intact: point-masses with definite positions, evolving in absolute space and time under continuous forces. This picture works for planets, projectiles, and engineering, but fails for atoms, radiation, and high velocities. It assumes trajectories exist, even when no experiment can reveal them. ### Relativity Relativity retained point-masses but discarded absolute space and absolute time. Space and time became a single geometric structure, and gravity became curvature. The ontology shifted: fields replaced forces, geometry replaced background, but the particle remained a localized entity following a path in spacetime. Relativity cannot accommodate discrete jumps or probabilistic outcomes. Its equations describe smooth, differentiable fields everywhere. ### Quantum Theory Quantum theory abandoned definite positions but kept discreteness. A particle is sometimes a point, sometimes a wave, depending on the experiment. Its evolution is continuous until a measurement, at which point it “collapses” to a location. Two incompatible rules govern the same entity. Trajectories do not exist. Observables do not have definite values. The theory succeeds in prediction but not in ontology. ### Quantum Field Theory Quantum Field Theory keeps relativity’s spacetime and quantum theory’s probability amplitudes, but restores particles through quantized excitations of fields. These excitations are treated as point-like for interactions. The self-energy divergences that arise from point-like excitations require renormalization — a successful mathematical procedure with no agreed physical interpretation. QFT unifies interactions mathematically, not ontologically. Locality, causality, and discreteness coexist under tension. ### The Resulting Split - Classical mechanics assumes continuous trajectories. - Relativity assumes smooth fields and geometric background. - Quantum mechanics assumes probabilistic non-trajectory behavior. - QFT assumes point-like excitations of continuous fields. Each branch preserves one incompatible piece of the Newtonian heritage: localization, smoothness, continuity, discreteness. None of them can be true together in the same ontology. This is the fragmentation produced by preserving the point-mass intuition: multiple theories, each accurate in its domain, none capable of describing reality as a unified whole. The patches worked. The ontology did not.