All-there-is from source-free electromagnetic energy.
To my friend, that contributed to almost every idea here written; knowingly or unknowingly.
Part I develops a framework in which events are the starting point. A registered change creates the basic distinction between “before” and “after.” Systems that update their state in response to influences build internal orderings, and from these orderings time emerges.
Causal steps link events into chains, and then loops. Loops support recurrent patterns and can act as clocks. Counting causal steps gives duration and also distance: the minimal number of steps between two subnodes. Collecting all pairwise distances produces an effective geometry.
Space and dimension arise when these distances can be embedded with low distortion into a space of some dimension. Multiple embeddings imply non-unique dimension; failure of all embeddings implies that geometry does not apply. Space and dimension are therefore relational constructs, not fundamental ingredients of reality.
The same compression mechanism explains arithmetic and mathematical laws. Stable patterns become symbolic rules; when the patterns shift, the rules shift with them. Mathematics succeeds where reality presents regularities, and fails where it does not.
Across Part I, a single theme recurs: we do not access the underlying causal structure itself. We access only its effects, and from these we construct representations that remain valid only while the observed patterns stay stable.
Reality begins not with space or time, but with the simple fact that events happen.
We often assume events happen for a reason. This doesn’t need to be so, and even if it is, we don’t have direct access to the causal information, but indirect through its effects.
A reason is a story added later. What matters is simply that a change occurs and that it can be registered in a way that affects our state. Once a change is registered, two states can be distinguished: “before” and “after.” That distinction is the event. Here we don’t appeal to an “intelligence recording an event,” but simply to a mark, like a scratch on a table, that affects the object’s state. It denotes only the minimal capacity to register change.
The sense of reason or explanation arises only as a reactive story as way of organizing transitions once change has been noticed by a reasoning entity (topic which we will address later in [@EmergenceOfSelf]).
This reactivity is not limited to conscious minds. Anything that changes in response to causes and produces effects is, in this minimal sense, operationally aware 1. A self-sustaining causal loop qualifies: it can update its own state in response to incoming influences. By doing so, it distinguishes states and tracks transitions—not through any “plan of action,” which would imply a consciousness we have not defined, but simply by virtue of its continued existence as a loop. In this minimal operational sense, a self-sustaining causal loop “notices” change.
Time is, thus, a construct: a tool operational awareness uses to organize its state. Each loop forms its own internal notion of time. Yet we maintain collective agreements: certain event-patterns (“causes”) tend to precede others (“effects”). Those who do not share the prevailing interpretation are often labeled “irrational,” though this only reflects different mappings between change and order.
We may picture “reality” 2 as a Node with an unknowable internal structure 3. All we know is that this structure reproduces patterns of transitions from which we infer “before” and “after.”
What we call “the past” is reconstructed now, from present evidence. If new evidence appears, our reconstruction may shift. The long debate about whether dietary fat was harmful or beneficial is a familiar example later shown to rest on selective data 4. Consensus reality is fragile. Without external anchors, interpretations feel arbitrary, raising the persistent question: what is real?
From the primitive relation
ni ≻ nj,
meaning “subnode ni causes nj,” an ordering arises: before and after. We may call this succession of events i and j a causal step.
A series of events forms a causal chain: i → a → b → c → d → j.
Chains can form loops:
… → j → i → a → b → c → j → i → …
and may cross themselves without restriction. Learning is a good illustration of multiple acknowledgdments and thus multiple “closes”. A loop can be considered considered “closed” when its pattern stabilizes in some useful sense. A “closed” loop, has however to continue propagating, as we mention later.
Repeated causal loops can function as clocks. Any recurrent sequence can serve as a clock. Accuracy varies, but recurrence suffices.
Note that an effect that produces no further causes marks the end of a causal chain. Such an endpoint cannot be registered—there is no return influence. Therefore the fact that anything is noticed at all implies that the noticer is, in essence, a self-sustaining causal loop.
By counting loops or causal steps, operational awareness defines durations. Time is an emergent count, not an external parameter.
Distance arises by tracking how many causal steps connect two subnodes. If a signal travels from ni to nj through a minimal chain of length Lij, then
d(ni, nj) ∝ Lij.
If no path exists, the distance is infinite or undefined. If the only available path returns to the same subnode, the round-trip count becomes an effective measure of separation. Distance is not a spatial coordinate but an operational measure of causal separation.
These causal distances define an effective geometry. Observers attempt to map them into familiar spaces of some chosen dimension.
More technically, we can think of a map ℳ into a space of dimension D, where each event is assigned a point, and the distances between those points approximate the causal distances:
∥ℳ(ni) − ℳ(nj)∥ ≈ d(ni, nj).
When such embeddings succeed with low distortion, observers perceive the corresponding subnodes as forming a D-dimensional structure under ℳ. If multiple embeddings work, dimension is not unique. If none succeed, all such maps ℳ are defective and geometry is ill-defined.
Thus, space, time, and dimension are not fundamental; they arise from how operational awareness compresses relational patterns. Geometry and distance appear only after repeated causal patterns stabilize into expectations.
Distance is the count of causal steps between two events. What we call “space” is the collection of all such distances. By gathering every pairwise separation into a single structure, operational awareness attempts to form a coherent geometric representation.
If the full set of distances can be embedded with low distortion into some D-dimensional space, we say the subnodes appear D-dimensional. If no low-distortion embedding exists, the notion of dimension breaks down.
The same distance data may admit several embeddings. A configuration may fit a triangle, two overlapping triangles, a star, or other shapes. Nothing enforces a unique interpretation; different interpretations may even coexist and function adequately. We only have effects—the causal distances—and from them we infer patterns to some acceptable accuracy. The preferred embedding is usually (but not always) the one that compresses the relations with minimal complexity while keeping distortion tolerable. Occam’s razor reflects this preference.
This pattern-recognition mechanism is not limited to geometry. Arithmetic emerges the same way. Repeated causal acts—placing one apple in a bag, then another—stabilize into a reliable pattern. From this, operational awareness forms the abstraction that 1 + 1 = 2. If two apples reliably produced three, arithmetic would encode that instead, and we would again regard the universe as “mathematical.” The rule is not discovered beneath reality; it is extracted from consistent effects and then used to predict further effects.
In some contexts, 1 + 1 can take any value permitted by the rules. One may define a formal system where 1 + 1 = 3 and build consistent mathematics from it. Even in everyday settings, combining two things rarely doubles a quantity cleanly. The outcome depends on the combination rules: posture, leverage, strategy. Only once those rules are fixed does the expression 1 + 1 = 2 become the correct statement. The “truth” of arithmetic reflects operational assumptions, not the causal substrate.
Space, time, dimension, and arithmetic arise from the same mechanism: recognizing regularities in causally connected events and compressing them into stable, predictive representations.
Plato illustrated the limits of our access to reality. We see shadows, not the real source. Our interpretations are reconstructions shaped by limited observation. There is no external vantage point from which the true structure can be viewed.
We do not have direct access, or in other words, can never observe the underlying causal substrate of reality; we observe only the effects that reach us.
Any geometry, dimension, or pattern we assign reflects how these effects can be compressed into a usable representation. A different observer, or a different sampling of the same causal structure, may construct a different representation without contradiction.
Shadows in Plato’s cave correspond to the relational patterns we detect. The “objects” casting those shadows are the underlying causal relations, which are inaccessible in themselves. We infer their organization from recurring effects, and when those effects change, our inferred picture must change with them. No representation we construct is guaranteed to be unique, complete, consistent, or stable.
This perspective removes the assumption that there is a single, correct spatial or mathematical description waiting to be uncovered. Our models are not mirrors of an external geometry; they are operational tools built from the limited regularities we can register. Like the prisoners in the cave, we work with projections, not with the structure that produces them.
What we call “reality” is therefore a reconstruction: a stable arrangement of inferred patterns that remains useful so long as the causal effects available to us support it.
Much has been said and written about reality being “mathematical,” though the phrase is rarely defined. The arguments above suggest a simpler view: we ascribe patterns to reality—sometimes because we genuinely recognize them, sometimes because we project them and treat the projection as real.
Mathematics does not have to govern the world. More often, we see the world through the mathematics we have created. Mathematics—and therefore physics— describes those aspects of the world that admit stable, compressible patterns. When a pattern is regular enough to be anticipated, we express that regularity symbolically and call the result a “law.” When the pattern breaks, the law breaks with it.
It is therefore not that reality is mathematical, nor that mathematics is the “language of nature.” Rather, we build mathematical models for the aspects of reality we can recognize, isolate, and predict. Wherever the world resists compression into stable patterns, our mathematics simply does not apply.
Mathematics succeeds because we select what it can describe—and which patterns we pay attention to—not because nature is made of numbers (or, in its most recent rebranding, “information”).
This perspective prepares the ground for a different approach. We start not from mathematical objects, but from predictable interactions and their cause-effect patterns.
Part II traces the evolution of different understandings of space, from early relational notions to the space-as-container picture most people now assume. It is not a complete historical account, but a selection of ideas that shaped how space, matter, and structure came to be described.
The history can be seen as a sequence of serendipitous developments—sometimes mutually incompatible—that together produced an increasingly accurate description of experience. From ancient thinkers, through Descartes and Newton, to modern theories, each step preserved convenient assumptions while extending their domain of applicability.
Yet if the experiences that led to the abstraction of Maxwell’s equations had appeared earlier, before the point-mass and point-charge intuitions had taken root, we might think of matter very differently. We would see it as a stable electromagnetic configuration with inertia, not as a distinct substance called “mass.” Charge, too, would not be an intrinsic primitive but an emergent property of structured energy flow. Objects would be extended rather than punctual.
Many assume that Maxwell’s equations, being continuous and classical, cannot produce discrete (“quantum”) effects. But discreteness does not require a non-classical theory. It can arise from topology.
Consider a standing electromagnetic wave on the surface of a torus in a source-free Maxwell universe. Such a configuration admits two winding numbers (m, n): the poloidal and toroidal cycles of the Poynting flow. These integers count how many times energy wraps around each independent loop of the torus. A (1, 1) mode wraps once around each hole; a (2, 1) mode wraps twice around one hole and once around the other. A standing wave is obtained from opposing counter-circulating flows.
In a source-free universe,
∇ ⋅ E = 0, ∇ ⋅ B = 0,
and therefore the Gaussian flux of E or B across any closed surface is zero.
Even so, nothing prevents non-zero tangential flow along the toroidal surface. This flow is proportional to the total energy E(m, n) of the standing wave. For a shell at radius r surrounding the configuration, the magnitude of the tangential flow scales as
$$ \propto \frac{E(m,n)}{\text{surface area at radius } r} \propto \frac{E(m,n)}{r^2}. $$
Thus, a radial 1/r2 decay profile—indistinguishable from that of an electric charge—is recovered without postulating any source. The “charge” is not a fundamental entity but the measurement of diluted tangential flow from a topologically quantized electromagnetic configuration.
As later chapters will show, this mechanism allows us to recover the full structure of electromagnetism with sources, but with the sources now understood as emergent rather than fundamental.
Geometry is ancient. Long before physics existed as a discipline, geometric relationships were studied as ideal forms: perfect lines, circles, and ratios. By Euclid (~300 BCE), geometry had become an abstract deductive system, independent of the imperfections of the physical world.
At the same time, Greek atomists such as Leucippus and Democritus proposed the opposite ontology: indivisible point-like atoms moving in void. From the start, Western thought carried two incompatible intuitions — reality as geometry, and reality as points.
Debates about whether numbers or perfect forms “exist” continue even today.
Plato held that geometric relations belong to a realm more real than the material world. In the Republic (510d–511a), he describes the objects of geometry as “eternal and unchanging,” while the visible world offers only “images and shadows of the true” (596a). In the Timaeus, he even assigns the Platonic solids as the elemental constituents of matter.
Modern perceptual psychology echoes this: humans routinely impose geometric structure on ambiguous patterns, as documented by Gestalt research (Wagemans et al., Annual Review of Psychology, 2012).
Descartes preserved the ancient view of geometry as abstract but introduced a crucial tool: analytic geometry. Coordinates allowed curves to be represented symbolically. For example, a circle of radius r in the x–y plane can be written as
x2 + y2 = r2.
This unified algebra and geometry. Crucially, introducing x, y, and r does not imply that the circle exists in a physical space. The coordinate system is only a convenient abstraction — a way to describe relationships without committing to a container in which they “live.”
His physics rejected both vacuum and action at a distance. All influence had to be transmitted by contact. He imagined matter as a continuous medium structured by vortices. Space was not a background arena separate from matter; the two were identical:
“The extension in length, breadth, and depth which constitutes the nature of a body is the same as that which constitutes the nature of space.” — Principles of Philosophy, II, §10
Descartes thus offered a relational, medium-based ontology — an early form of field thinking.
Long before Newton’s point-mass ontology hardened into the standard story, Descartes proposed a universe filled with continuous substance. There are no empty gaps, no distant action, no isolated particles. Everything moves because everything pushes on everything else. Motion cannot cross a void; it must propagate through a medium. That medium naturally forms vortices.
A Cartesian vortex is not a swirling fluid inside space. It is the local organization of motion that creates the sense of space. Coherent regions of rotation sustain themselves through continuous contact interactions. Bodies are carried along by the circulating flow, not pushed by external forces. What later physics names “inertia” is, for Descartes, the natural persistence of motion in a rotating medium.
Common misunderstandings obscure several essential points:
The medium is universal. Descartes does not place vortices within space; the vortices generate the relational structure that we interpret as space.
Bodies are not separate from the medium. A “body” is merely a denser or more organized region of the same continuous substance.
There is no empty space. The medium fills all that exists. Motion is always relational and always transmitted through contact.
Gravity is not attraction. Smaller bodies spiral inward because the surrounding circulation creates pressure gradients — not because of any mysterious force acting across emptiness.
Geometry emerges from flow patterns. Straight-line motion is simply the trajectory that best preserves the local structure of rotation.
Descartes’ error was not conceptual but mathematical. Without the tools of wave theory and field dynamics, he could not quantify how vortices remain stable or how they propagate influence without losing coherence.
Newton and Leibniz invented the mathematical language — calculus — that Descartes and earlier thinkers lacked. Newton also reshaped the ontology of physics: he removed the medium, restored action at a distance, and introduced absolute space and absolute time as a fixed, God-given stage.
“Absolute space, in its own nature, without relation to anything external, remains always similar and immovable.” — Principia, Scholium
He treated bodies as mathematical points only for convenience:
Bodies may be “considered as points” when their size is irrelevant. — Principia, Book I, Lemma I
But the enormous success of celestial mechanics elevated this convenience into a foundational assumption. Matter became point-masses; gravity became an instantaneous force acting across empty space.
Newton himself was uneasy with the metaphysics:
“That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter… is to me so great an absurdity…” — Letter to Bentley (1692)
Yet no mechanism for transmission was available, and the equations worked.
Newton’s mechanics could not function without a fixed background. This is not a philosophical preference but a mathematical requirement woven into the structure of his laws. Inertia, acceleration, straightness, and uniformity all depend on a reference that does not move. Without such a reference, Newton believed motion would be ambiguous, and the laws would lose their meaning.
Newton’s First Law states:
A body perseveres in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a straight line…
But “straight” relative to what? “Uniform” with respect to what clock?
If motion is purely relative, then any object moving on a curve can always claim to be moving straight — by redefining the coordinate system. Newton recognized this directly. In the Scholium he warns that relative descriptions can always be reinterpreted:
“If relative places are considered as absolute, the motions that result from their translation will be the same, as if they had been real.”
In other words: relative-only frameworks erase the distinction between straight and curved motion, making inertia undefinable.
Thus Newton introduces:
“Absolute space… remains always similar and immovable.”
Not because space must be an entity, but because the mathematics of inertia cannot survive without a stable baseline.
Newton repeatedly insists that we must distinguish real motion from apparent motion:
“The true motions can be distinguished from apparent ones by their causes and effects.”
A rotating bucket gives one of the clearest causes and effects: the concave surface of the water appears when the water rotates relative to something external, even when it is not rotating relative to the bucket.
For Newton, this shows:
Acceleration must be measured against a fixed background — absolute space — because forces depend on acceleration, and therefore so must the laws.
Newton’s core law is:
$$ \mathbf{F} = m\mathbf{a} = m\frac{d^2\mathbf{x}}{dt^2}. $$
Acceleration is the second derivative of position. But second derivatives are not invariant under arbitrary motions of the coordinate system. If the coordinate grid accelerates, the same object can appear to accelerate or not accelerate depending on the observer.
For Newton, this was intolerable. If acceleration is relative, then:
Thus, acceleration must be defined with respect to something that does not accelerate — absolute space.
Newton understood that velocity and acceleration must have unique values for his conservation laws and planetary dynamics to work. If motion is defined only relationally:
In correspondence with Bentley (1692), Newton explains:
“The orbital motions cannot be explained without assuming a certain fixed frame.”
In short: The numbers themselves require a fixed reference.
Without absolute space, there is no unique measure of velocity, no stable time parameter, and no definition of straightness — and thus no mechanics.
Newton was not happy with action at a distance, and he was not happy with absolute space. He repeatedly calls instantaneous attraction “an absurdity.” He disliked making space into a “thing.”
But he had no mechanism for transmitting forces, and no mathematical tools for emergent geometry. His equations demanded:
He had no choice but to introduce absolute space as the container in which all dynamics occur.
This was not metaphysics. It was structural.
The irony is that Newton introduced absolute space to maintain the consistency of his equations, while Maxwell later produced equations whose consistency forbids such a background. Maxwell’s waves require a medium in early interpretations, but the failure to detect that medium led to the opposite extreme — Einstein’s relational spacetime.
Both Newton and Einstein tried to preserve the form of their equations; neither had access to a deeper causal substrate.
In a Maxwell-Universe ontology, neither absolute space nor curved spacetime is fundamental. They are reconstructions — attempts to impose order on causal flow.
Newton needed absolute space to make inertia meaningful. Maxwell reveals why inertia might arise without it.
Newton used the rotating bucket to argue for absolute rotation: the concave surface of the water, he said, reveals rotation relative to absolute space, not relative to the bucket. Ernst Mach disagreed. For Mach, the concavity arises because the water is rotating relative to the mass distribution of the entire universe. If the distant stars were somehow fixed to the bucket, or if the whole universe rotated in perfect synchrony with the water, the surface would remain flat.
This view treats inertia not as a property defined by a container space, but as a response to all other mass in the cosmos. Rotation is relational: it is determined by the motion of the water relative to everything else.
Mach never supplied a mechanism; he only exposed the logical weakness in Newton’s argument: the bucket experiment does not uniquely identify absolute space as the cause. It only shows that the water responds to something outside the bucket—but whether that “something” is space itself or the rest of the universe remains undecidable within Newton’s framework.
It is also worth remembering what Newton and Mach did not know: electromagnetism, field momentum, and boundary-induced shear effects had not yet been discovered. Superconductivity and frictionless interfaces were unimaginable. The possibility that the bucket–water interaction depends on microscopic coupling or on momentum transfer mediated by fields lay centuries beyond their reach. Both thinkers worked without concepts that would later reshape our understanding of the mechanisms by which systems can exchange motion.
The familiar story that Michelson and Morley “disproved the ether” is a later simplification. In 1887 the null result was surprising, but it was not regarded as fatal to the ether concept.
First, a null result does not show that the ether does not exist; it shows only that the tested model of the ether was incomplete. Physicists of the time took the outcome as evidence that the theory needed revision, not rejection.
Second, the response was immediate. FitzGerald and Lorentz introduced length contraction, and Lorentz developed a full dynamical framework in which the null result was expected. Lorentz Ether Theory absorbed the anomaly and remained empirically viable. At this stage, the experiment did not distinguish between an ether and no ether at all.
Third, Maxwell’s equations were unaffected. They require a constant propagation speed, not a material substrate. The null result confirmed the constancy of the speed of light, which was compatible with both ether-based interpretations and early hints of relativity. Nothing in the data forced one reading over the other.
Fourth, the ether carried enormous conceptual inertia. For centuries, waves had always been understood as motions of a medium. Space had long been treated as a container. One experiment could not overturn such a framework. The null result was important, but it merely constrained ether models rather than eliminating them.
The real difficulties accumulated later. Ether theories multiplied, each introducing new assumptions to save the framework; none satisfied all observations. Meanwhile Maxwell’s equations proved self-sufficient, and Einstein’s reformulation showed that Lorentz symmetry does not require a preferred frame. Only then did the ether lose its role—not because one experiment refuted it, but because the overall conceptual structure that supported it eventually failed.
By the late 19th century, ether theories were strained. The Michelson–Morley experiment added another tension point, but contrary to popular retellings, it did not eliminate the ether; it merely forced another revision.
The experiment failed to detect any motion relative to the ether. Lorentz did not abandon the framework; he strengthened it. To reconcile the null result with a stationary ether, he proposed that moving bodies physically contract along the direction of motion and that their internal clocks slow down. These were dynamical effects—real physical deformations of matter—introduced to preserve the ether as an undetectable reference frame.
Einstein took a different step. In 1905 he kept Lorentz’s mathematical transformations but reinterpreted them: not as distortions of matter within an ether, but as kinematic symmetries of all physical laws. The speed of light became invariant because the equations of physics require it, not because waves move through a hidden medium. Special Relativity removed the mechanical ether.
General Relativity then replaced absolute space with a structured background: spacetime itself. In his 1920 Leiden lecture Einstein writes:
“According to the general theory of relativity, space is endowed with physical qualities; in this sense, therefore, there exists an ether.”
Einstein ultimately hoped for a pure-field description of matter—geons, Einstein–Rosen bridges, and unified field theories—but these attempts never overcame the deeply rooted point-mass ontology inherited from Newton.
The point-mass framework, extended by successive patches rather than replaced, produced a physics divided against itself. Each major theory preserved a different fragment of the original intuition.
Classical mechanics kept Newton’s ontology intact: point-masses with definite positions evolving in absolute space and time under continuous forces. Successful for everyday scales, it fails for atoms, radiation, and high velocities.
Relativity retained point-masses but discarded absolute space and absolute time. Space and time became geometric; gravity became curvature. The equations are smooth and deterministic. The ontology is local and continuous.
Relativity cannot account for discrete jumps, probabilistic outcomes, or collapse-like behavior.
Quantum theory abandoned definite positions but kept discreteness. A particle is point-like when detected and wave-like when not. Schrödinger sought a continuous field ontology, but Born reintroduced point behavior via the probability rule.
Two incompatible rules govern the same entity: continuous evolution and abrupt collapse.
Quantum Field Theory merges relativity with quantum amplitudes but restores particles through quantized excitations of fields — treated as point-like for interactions. Self-energy divergences follow; renormalization removes infinities without explaining their meaning.
Feynman famously remarked that renormalization “sweeps infinity under the rug” and that point particles make no physical sense, even though the calculations work.
Each branch preserves a different part of the Newtonian inheritance: localization, continuity, determinism, or discreteness. None of them can be true together in the same ontology.
The patches succeeded; the ontology did not.
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 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 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 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 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.
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.
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 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 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 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 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.
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.
Within the Node, subnodes interact. These interactions are the only primitives. When awareness notices that one transition reliably precedes another, we call the first a “cause” and the second an “effect.” Nothing is “in space.” Nothing “ticks” in time. Only relational influence exists.
The speed at which a cause produces an effect is what we call the speed of light. Nothing can exceed it because it is a relational bound, not a moving object’s velocity.
As a preview for later chapters, this fundamental cause–effect speed c0 has no requirement to be uniform everywhere 5. Things may happen faster or slower in different regions of the Node. Maxwell’s equations already show that wave speed depends on energy density, as in a dielectric. Further details come later.
Back Cover
A Maxwell Universe begins from a simple premise: events occur.
Registered change creates order. Time, distance, space, dimension, mathematics, and physical laws emerge from cause–effect patterns, not from a pre-existing spacetime or fixed rules. We never access any substrate directly; we see only the regularities in the effects available to us.
Physics inherited a point-mass, point-charge ontology that shaped how matter and structure were described—creating problems that arose from our interpretations, not from nature itself.
This book develops a different foundation: a universe built entirely from electromagnetic energy. Quantization, mass, charge, and structure arise from the cause–effect relations encoded in classical, linear, continuous Maxwell laws. Physical objects are stable electromagnetic configurations—circulating energy patterns that persist and interact. Forces, geometry, and large-scale behavior emerge from the dynamics of these patterns.
In its final chapters, the book shows how perception, self, and agency can emerge from the same kinds of causal loops that give rise to time and space.
A Maxwell Universe offers a unified ontology: one substrate, one dynamics, one physical reality in which matter, charges, forces, and solids are electromagnetic fields.
Palma, A., & Rodriguez, A. M. (2025). Operational Awareness in a Maxwell-Only Universe: A Formal Implication of Panpsychism. ResearchGate. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.13647.60324/1↩︎
Reality—“all that is”—includes everything you can think of and everything you suspect exists but do not consciously consider. Any formal definition is partial.↩︎
As in Plato’s cave: the underlying structure is inaccessible in principle. We see only shadows and name some “causes” and others “effects.”↩︎
Late-20th-century nutrition science framed fat as the main cause of heart disease, but later reviews showed selective reporting and industry influence. Contradictory data had been minimized. Re-analysis revealed a weaker link than claimed, showing how consensus can form around distorted evidence.↩︎
If certain subnodes behave according to Maxwell’s equations, the effective propagation speed depends on local energy density. Written plainly, this is unsurprising: energy alters how fast things happen.↩︎