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| Illustration by R.E. Slater and ChatGPT, "A cosmic web of interconnected light." |
Series Objective
Cosmic Becoming Cycle → poetic/metaphysical expansion
Embodied Process Realism → formal philosophical framework
Processual Divine Coherence → later theological bridge
Preface - Toward a Relational Ontology of Coherence
“What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” - Werner Heisenberg
If reality is the metaphysics of the universe, what then is the cosmology of reality?
In essay one, we will proceed from a simple but far-reaching proposal:
... that gravity, long treated as a fundamental force mediated by quantum particles (known as gravitons), may be more accurately understood as an expression of cosmic coherence - specifically, the persistence of relational coherence across the unfolding of becoming, through which reality stabilizes, persists, and becomes embodied.If this is so, then gravity is not merely one feature of the physical world among others, but an illustrative window into the deeper structure of reality itself.
Per these assumptions, the guiding thesis of this work may be thus stated:
Gravity may not be a fundamental quantum force mediated by graviton particles, but the expression of trans-scale relational coherence through which reality stabilizes, persists, and becomes embodied.
From this perspective, the real is not that which simply exists as a static object, or isolated entity, but the ongoing coherence of relations through which reality endures and becomes.
Let us summarize it thusly:
The real is that which coheres - enduring across the unfolding of becoming
The real is not that which simply exists, but that which persistently coheres, enduring across the unfolding of cosmic becoming.
Cosmological reality is the persistent coherence of relations, continuously sustained across the unfolding of becoming.Reality is the persistence of relational coherence, through which becoming holds together across its own unfolding.
To pursue this claim is to move beyond a particle-based ontology (scientific realism et al.) toward a relational one (processual realism), in which structure, persistence, and continuity take precedence over matter or substance.
It is also to reconsider the meaning of realism itself. If what is most fundamental is not thing-ness but relational coherence, then realism must be reformulated in processual terms: not as the affirmation of independently existing objects, but as the affirmation of enduring patterns of relations through which objects come to exist and are continuously constituted.
II
This project will propose a reconstruction - both scientific and philosophical. It seeks to reframe gravity beyond the language of particles and forces, and to develop in its place a relational ontology grounded in coherence. In doing so, it draws together insights from contemporary physics, process philosophy, and metaphysical reflection, allowing each to inform and deepen the others.
The scope of this inquiry extends beyond gravity narrowly conceived. Indeed, it must be said at the outset:
This project is not just about gravity - it is about what holds the universe together, what allows anything to persist, and what we mean when we speak of the real.
Within the broader architecture of this work, this project occupies a central and integrative role. It connects directly with the What Is Reality? series, which establishes the foundational ontological framework within which these questions arise. It resonates with the Cosmic Becoming Cycle, which explores these themes in a more poetic and metaphysical register. It contributes to the formal development of Embodied Process Realism, providing a conceptual grounding for that framework. And it anticipates, without yet entering fully into, the theological horizon of Processual Divine Coherence, where questions of persistence, relation, and meaning take on further depth.
Taken together, these motifs form a single trajectory: an attempt to understand reality not as a collection of things, but as an ongoing, structured, and coherent process of becoming.
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| Ref 1 - FAS Standard Model; Ref 2 - Wikipedia Standard Model |
I - The Collapse of the Graviton Paradigm
From Force to Structure
“Space is not a thing, but a system of relations.” - Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
As an aside, the Higgs field is not a force like the other four; it is a (background) field which gives mass to certain particles without acting on them directly, and its quantum excitation is the Higgs boson. Hence, the Higgs field complicates the simple classification of nature into forces and particles. Unlike the other interactions, it does not mediate a force between entities, but instead establishes the conditions under which particles acquire mass. In this sense, it functions less as an interaction and more as a structural feature of the physical world - an observation that opens the door to reconsidering whether gravity itself may belong to a similar category.
This assumption is not arbitrary. It arose from the remarkable success of quantum field theory in describing three of the four known interactions of nature. If the electromagnetic, weak, and strong forces could be quantized - each expressed through exchange particles - then it seemed both natural and necessary that gravity should follow suit. The graviton-particle thus became a placeholder for the theoretical completion of gravity: the final piece in a unified, particle-based description of reality.
And yet, despite decades of effort, the graviton remains undetected, and more importantly, increasingly conceptually strained.
The difficulty is not merely experimental - gravity is extraordinarily weak compared to other interactions - but structural. When physicists attempt to treat gravity as a conventional quantum field, the mathematics resists. The resulting theories are often non-renormalizable, plagued by infinities that cannot be cleanly removed. More significantly, the very framework of quantum field theory assumes a fixed spacetime background, while gravity, as described by General Relativity, is the structure of spacetime itself. One is asked, in effect, to quantize the stage upon which all other quantum processes depend.
This tension has led to a growing recognition: perhaps the problem is not that we have failed to find the graviton, but that we have misunderstood what gravity is.
If gravity is not a force in the same sense as the others - if it is not something transmitted between objects, but something constitutive of their very relations - then the search for a particle mediator may be misdirected from the start. What appears as gravitational attraction may instead be the expression of a deeper structural condition: the way in which the universe holds itself together.
Such a shift is not merely technical. It is ontological.
To move beyond the graviton paradigm is to move beyond a picture of reality composed of discrete entities interacting through exchanged forces. It is to begin considering a world in which relations are primary, in which structure precedes substance, and in which what we call “gravity” may be the manifestation of coherence itself.
This essay marks the beginning of that transition.
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| Fundamental Interactions of the Standard Model including the hypothetical graviton |
Wikipedia - Despite being perhaps the most familiar fundamental interaction, gravity is not described by the Standard Model, due to contradictions that arise when combining general relativity, the modern theory of gravity, and quantum mechanics. However, gravity is so weak at microscopic scales, that it is essentially unmeasurable. The graviton is postulated to be the mediating particle, but has not yet been proved to exist.
II. The Graviton and Its Assumptions
We ask questions of reality we are unable to answer. What holds the universe together? What allows it to persist? What does "real" even mean? - R.E. Slater
The concept of the graviton rests upon a set of assumptions inherited from the broader success of quantum field theory. At its core lies a simple and powerful idea based upon quantum science: that forces arise through the exchange of particles. In this framework, interactions are not continuous influences but discrete events, mediated by quanta that carry energy and momentum between otherwise independent entities.
Applied to gravity, this logic yields a clear expectation. If gravity is a force, then it must have a force-carrier. The graviton is posited as that carrier: a massless, spin-2 particle whose properties would encode the geometric character of gravitational interaction. Unlike the photon, however, the graviton must reflect the tensorial nature of spacetime curvature, coupling not merely to energy-charge but to energy-momentum itself.
Yet embedded within this elegant extension are several deeper commitments:
- First, that gravity is fundamentally analogous to the other forces - that it acts between objects rather than constituting the relations that define them.
- Second, that spacetime can be treated as a background within which interactions occur, rather than as a dynamic participant within the interaction itself.
- Third, that the ontology of physics is ultimately particle-based: that the most basic description of reality consists of discrete entities exchanging quanta.
Each of these assumptions, while fruitful in other domains, becomes unstable when applied to gravity.
In General Relativity, gravity is not something that happens in spacetime. It is the curvature of spacetime. Massive bodies do not exert a force in the traditional sense; they alter the geometry through which all motion unfolds. Objects follow geodesics - not because they are pulled, but because the structure of spacetime itself constrains their paths.
To introduce a graviton into this picture is to attempt a translation: to reinterpret curvature as the cumulative effect of quantum particle exchange (via gravitons). But this translation is not seamless. It requires reintroducing a background spacetime in order to define the quantum field, even as gravity itself is paradoxically supposed to determine that background. The result is a conceptual circularity that has proven difficult to resolve.
Thus, the graviton, while mathematically suggestive, may signal not the resolution to quantum gravity, but a symptom of a deeper mismatch between conceptual frameworks... not only between the sciences of general relativity vs quantum physics - but within the metaphysical assumptions which underlie the structure of cosmology itself.
III. Cracks in the Paradigm
Gravity is the expression of trans-scale relational coherence through which reality stabilizes, persists, and becomes embodied. - R.E. Slater
As efforts to quantize gravity have progressed, several lines of tension have emerged - each pointing toward the possibility that gravity resists reduction to a quantized particle-mediated force.
- The first is technical but telling: non-renormalizability. When gravity is treated as a quantum field in the same manner as the electromagnetic or nuclear forces, the calculations produce divergences that cannot be consistently controlled. Unlike other interactions, gravity appears to demand an infinite number of counterterms, undermining predictive power.
- The second is conceptual. Standard quantum field theory is typically formulated on a fixed spacetime background - one where hypothesized force-particles exist and dynamically interact. In contrast, gravity in Einstein’s formulation is not a force within spacetime, but the dynamical structure of spacetime itself. One cannot cleanly separate the actor from the arena. While graviton models attempt to describe gravity as quantized excitations of the gravitational field, they are usually defined relative to background spacetime geometry. But to fully quantize gravity one must in some sense quantize the geometry of spacetime itself, raising the deeper question of what, if anything, truly remains as a reference frame within this circular frame of reasoning.
- The third is increasingly empirical, though indirect. Developments in black hole thermodynamics, holography, and quantum information suggest that spacetime geometry may emerge from more fundamental, non-geometric degrees of freedom. Entropy, entanglement, and information flow appear to play a constitutive role in shaping gravitational phenomena, hinting that what we perceive as spacetime curvature may be a macroscopic manifestation of deeper, ontological patterns of relational structure within the cosmos.
Taken together, these unresolved tensions, or fault lines, do not yet constitute a collapse - but they do suggest that the graviton paradigm may be incomplete.
More importantly, they open the door to a different kind of question:
What if gravity is not something that needs to be quantized as a force, but something that emerges from the way reality organizes itself?
IV. Coda - Coherence and the Real
What we perceive as spacetime curvature may be the macroscopic expression of deeper relational structures - patterns of coherence unfolding across the ontological fabric of the cosmos. - R.E. Slater
In philosophical and physical terms alike, this claim may be stated more precisely...
...Rather than expressing gravity as a force among forces, we might re-adjust it philosophically as a trans-scale relational coherence process which can be expressed globally as structure, and locally as intensity, where intensity names the embodied constraint through which coherence persists.
- In quantum and physical description, scalar quantities refer to magnitudes defined at a point, while gravity is more properly described as a tensorial structure: the curvature of spacetime, inherently directional and relational.
- Yet, in philosophical terms, this distinction may be reframed. What appears globally as trans-scale coherence is experienced locally as intensity - manifested through constraint, curvature, and embodiment. Thus, while “scalar” belongs to the technical language of physics, “intensity” serves here as its conceptual analogue, translating scientific description into a process-relational ontology.
From this perspective, gravity is neither an added feature of the universe nor a force imposed upon it. It is the persistence of relational coherence itself - it is the manner in which becoming holds together across its own evolutionary unfolding. What appears as attraction is, more fundamentally, the persistence of structure through which reality endures.
If the quantum graviton does not exist - not merely as an undetected particle, but as a misdirected conceptual extension - then the task before physics is altered at its root. The question is no longer:
What particle carries gravity?
But rather:
What kind of universe gives rise to gravitational behavior at all?
And should the graviton eventually be discovered, the deeper point will remain. The cosmos would still consist not merely of particles, but of relations - cohering within an evolving structure of reality whose persistence cannot be reduced to exchange alone. The graviton, in this sense, serves not as a final answer, but as a conceptual point of departure for the larger question: What is reality?
Thus, our philosophical point of inquiry marks a decisive shift within scientific realism: from particles to cosmic relations, from force to structure, and from isolated entities to coherence. In this shift, the ontology of the cosmos is not abandoned but clarified as processual, relational, and enduring.
It is this reorientation that will guide the next essay.
This bibliography reflects the interdisciplinary nature of the present work, drawing from particle physics, quantum gravity, philosophy of science, and process thought. It is intended not as an exhaustive catalog, but as a curated foundation for exploring gravity as relational coherence within an evolving ontology of becoming.
Griffiths, David J. Introduction to Elementary Particles. 2nd ed. Weinheim: Wiley-VCH, 2008.
Peskin, Michael E., and Daniel V. Schroeder. An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory. Boulder: Westview Press, 1995.
Weinberg, Steven. The Quantum Theory of Fields. Vols. 1–3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995–2000.
Zee, A. Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell. 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.
Wikipedia. Quantum Gravity. Last modified 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_gravity
Rovelli, Carlo. Quantum Gravity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Rovelli, Carlo. Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity. New York: Riverhead Books, 2017.
Smolin, Lee. Three Roads to Quantum Gravity. New York: Basic Books, 2001.
Greene, Brian. The Elegant Universe. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999.
Verlinde, Erik. “On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton.” Journal of High Energy Physics 2011, no. 4 (2011): 029.
Susskind, Leonard. The Black Hole War. New York: Little, Brown, 2008.
Penrose, Roger. The Road to Reality. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.
Einstein, Albert. Relativity: The Special and the General Theory. New York: Crown Publishers, 1961.
Misner, Charles W., Kip S. Thorne, and John Archibald Wheeler. Gravitation. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1973.
Wald, Robert M. General Relativity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
Ladyman, James, and Don Ross. Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
van Fraassen, Bas C. The Scientific Image. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Wheeler, John Archibald. “Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links.” In Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information, edited by Wojciech H. Zurek, 3–28. Redwood City, CA: Addison-Wesley, 1990.
Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality. New York: Free Press, 1978.
Whitehead, Alfred North. Science and the Modern World. New York: Free Press, 1967.
Whitehead, Alfred North. Adventures of Ideas. New York: Free Press, 1967.
Hartshorne, Charles. The Divine Relativity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948.
Cobb, John B., Jr. A Christian Natural Theology. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1965.
Berry, Thomas. The Dream of the Earth. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988.
Kauffman, Stuart. At Home in the Universe. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Deacon, Terrence W. Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter. New York: W. W. Norton, 2011.
Barad, Karen. Meeting the Universe Halfway. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007.
VIDEOS & ILLUSTRATIONS
I. Overview
The Standard Model of particle physics represents the most successful and experimentally verified framework for understanding the fundamental constituents of matter and their interactions. It describes a total of seventeen elementary particles - organized into fermions and bosons - and accounts for three of the four known fundamental interactions: electromagnetism, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force. Gravity, notably, is absent from this framework.
At its core, the Standard Model provides a quantum field-theoretic description of how matter is constituted and how interactions occur through the exchange of force-carrying particles. It explains how quarks combine to form protons and neutrons, how electrons and neutrinos behave, and how forces are mediated through gauge bosons. The inclusion of the Higgs boson, confirmed experimentally in 2012, completes the model by accounting for the mechanism through which certain particles acquire mass.
Despite its extraordinary success, the Standard Model remains a provisional theory - remarkably precise within its domain, yet incomplete as a final description of physical reality.
II. Core Components
A. Fermions: The Constituents of Matter
The Standard Model identifies twelve fermions as the building blocks of matter. These are divided into two categories: quarks and leptons, each organized into three generations of increasing mass.
The six quarks - up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom - combine in various configurations to form composite particles such as protons and neutrons. These, in turn, constitute atomic nuclei.
The six leptons include the electron, muon, and tau, along with their corresponding neutrinos. Electrons play a central role in atomic structure, while neutrinos, though weakly interacting, are abundant throughout the universe.
Each generation mirrors the others in structure but differs in mass, raising unresolved questions about why such generational repetition exists.
B. Gauge Bosons: Mediators of Interaction
Interactions within the Standard Model occur through the exchange of gauge bosons, which act as carriers of the fundamental forces:
- The photon mediates the electromagnetic force, governing interactions between charged particles.
- The W and Z bosons mediate the weak force, responsible for processes such as radioactive decay and neutrino interactions.
- Gluons mediate the strong force, binding quarks together within protons and neutrons and maintaining the stability of atomic nuclei.
These bosons do not merely accompany interactions - they constitute the mechanism by which interactions occur within the quantum field framework.
C. The Higgs Boson and the Higgs Field
Distinct from the gauge bosons, the Higgs boson is associated with the Higgs field, a scalar field that permeates all of space. Unlike the other fields, which mediate interactions, the Higgs field establishes a background condition through which certain particles acquire mass.
As particles interact with the Higgs field, they experience resistance to motion, which manifests as inertial mass. The Higgs boson itself is an excitation of this field - a localized manifestation confirming its existence.
This mechanism completes the Standard Model mathematically, yet it also complicates the simple categorization of all fundamental phenomena as forces mediated by particle exchange.
III. Strengths and Achievements
The Standard Model stands as one of the most precise scientific theories ever developed. Its predictions have been confirmed repeatedly through high-energy experiments, including:
- the discovery of the top quark in 1995
- the detection of the Higgs boson in 2012 at CERN
The model successfully unifies the electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions within a single quantum field-theoretic framework, demonstrating how apparently distinct forces emerge from deeper symmetries.
It also provides a detailed account of atomic and subatomic structure, explaining how matter forms and behaves across a wide range of conditions.
IV. Limitations and Open Questions
Despite its success, the Standard Model is widely recognized as incomplete.
A. Absence of GravityMost significantly, the Standard Model does not incorporate gravity. While gravity is well described by General Relativity at macroscopic scales, attempts to integrate it into the quantum framework have proven difficult. This absence marks a fundamental gap in our understanding of the universe.
B. Dark Matter and Dark Energy
The model accounts only for ordinary matter, which constitutes a small fraction (5%) of the total energy content of the universe. It offers no explanation for dark matter (25-27%) or dark energy (68-70%), which together comprise the majority of cosmic structure and dynamics (93-97%).
C. Neutrino Mass
Originally, the Standard Model treated neutrinos as massless. However, experimental evidence now confirms that neutrinos possess small but nonzero masses. This discrepancy requires extensions or modifications to the theory.
D. Matter-Antimatter Asymmetry
The Standard Model cannot adequately explain why the observable universe contains far more matter than antimatter. According to basic symmetry principles, the Big Bang should have produced equal amounts of both, leading to mutual annihilation. The persistence of matter remains an unresolved problem even as it has provided the known universe we live in.
V. The Standard Model as Provisional
For all its precision, the Standard Model is best understood not as a final theory, but as an extraordinarily successful approximation within a limited domain. It describes how particles behave and interact under known conditions, but it does not fully explain why the universe exhibits the structure it does.
In particular, its particle-based ontology, while powerful, may not capture deeper relational or structural features of reality. The absence of gravity, the role of the Higgs field as a non-force background condition, and the unresolved cosmological questions all suggest that a more fundamental framework remains to be discovered.
VI. Transitional Reflection
Within the context of this project, the Standard Model serves as both foundation and limit. It demonstrates the remarkable success of describing reality in terms of particles and interactions, while simultaneously revealing the boundaries of that approach.
If gravity resists incorporation into this framework, and if certain fundamental features of reality - such as mass, structure, and cosmic persistence - arise not from particle exchange but from deeper relational conditions, then the path forward may require a shift in ontology.
Such a shift moves from particles to relations, from forces to structure, and from isolated entities to coherence. It is from within this tension that the present inquiry proceeds.
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| The cGh cube redrawn by CMG Lee |
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| The cGh cube redrawn as a Venn diagram by CMG Lee |
I. The Problem of Quantum Gravity
One of the central challenges in modern physics is the unresolved tension between two foundational theories:
- General Relativity, which describes gravity as the curvature of spacetime at large (cosmological) scales
- Quantum Mechanics, which governs the behavior of matter and energy at the smallest (subatomic) scales
Each theory is extraordinarily successful within its domain. Yet when applied together—particularly in extreme conditions such as black holes or the early universe—they become mathematically incompatible.
The task of quantum gravity is therefore:
to develop a unified framework capable of describing gravity within the principles of quantum theory.
At present, no complete and experimentally verified theory of quantum gravity exists, and the field remains an open area of active research.
Unlike the other forces described in the Standard Model, gravity is not simply a field operating within spacetime—it is the structure of spacetime itself.
This creates a fundamental difficulty:
- Quantum field theory assumes a fixed background spacetime
- General relativity asserts that spacetime is dynamic and shaped by matter and energy
Thus, any attempt to quantize gravity must confront a deeper issue:
how to quantize not just fields within spacetime, but spacetime itself.
This is not merely a technical challenge, but a conceptual one—suggesting that gravity may not fit neatly into the same ontological category as the other forces.
Several leading theoretical frameworks attempt to resolve this problem. While differing in assumptions and methods, each reflects a shift away from simple particle-based descriptions.
String Theory proposes that the fundamental constituents of reality are not point particles, but one-dimensional “strings” whose vibrational modes give rise to different particles.
A key feature of string theory is that:
- one vibrational mode naturally corresponds to a graviton
- making gravity an intrinsic part of the theory
However, this comes at a cost:
- the requirement of extra spatial dimensions
- a vast number of possible solutions (“string landscape”)
- and, as yet, no direct experimental confirmation
Loop Quantum Gravity takes a different approach.
Rather than introducing new entities within spacetime, it seeks to quantize spacetime directly. In this framework:
- space is composed of discrete units (Planck-scale “loops”)
- organized into networks known as spin networks
- which evolve over time into “spin foams”
Thus:
spacetime itself has a granular structure at the smallest scales
This approach is background independent, meaning spacetime is not assumed in advance but emerges from the theory.
Beyond these two major programs, a number of other approaches explore the nature of quantum gravity:
- Twistor theory, emphasizing geometric and light-like structures
- Noncommutative geometry, modifying the mathematical structure of spacetime
- Causal dynamical triangulations, modeling spacetime as discrete building blocks
- Holographic principles, suggesting spacetime emerges from lower-dimensional information
These diverse efforts reflect a shared recognition:
gravity may arise from deeper relational or structural features not captured by conventional particle frameworks.
Despite decades of work, all candidate theories face significant obstacles:
A. Lack of Experimental Evidence
No current theory of quantum gravity has been directly tested. The relevant energy scales (Planck scale) are far beyond present experimental capabilities.
B. Mathematical and Conceptual Complexity
Each framework introduces new mathematical structures and unresolved issues, including:
- reconciling discrete and continuous descriptions of spacetime
- recovering classical gravity at large scales
- defining time within quantum frameworks (“the problem of time”)
C. Proliferation of Possibilities
Particularly in string theory, the vast number of possible solutions complicates the search for a unique description of reality.
V. Quantum Gravity and the Limits of Particle Ontology
Across these approaches, a pattern emerges:
- gravity is not easily reducible to a particle exchange mechanism
- spacetime may be emergent rather than fundamental
- relational structure may precede objects
Even in theories that include gravitons, such as string theory, gravity appears as a consequence of deeper structural dynamics rather than a standalone force.
This suggests a broader interpretive shift:
from particles to relations, from force to structure, and from background spacetime to emergent geometry.
VI. Transitional Reflection
It reveals the limits of describing reality solely in terms of particles and forces, and points toward a more foundational question:
What kind of structure must reality possess for gravity to arise at all?
In this sense, quantum gravity research - whether successful in its current forms or not - serves as an indicator of a deeper ontological transition.
It is precisely this transition that the present project seeks to articulate: a movement toward understanding gravity not as a force among others, but as the expression of trans-scale relational coherence through which reality stabilizes and persists.
