The Emergence of the Relational Paradigm

What comes after atomism?

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Fundamental understandings of the universe change only very slowly. Over the past thousand years we have seen the shift from a monotheistic worldview with humans at the centre of the universe to the radically decentered, physicalist paradigm that is still with us today, albeit in a radically altered form from the Newtonian picture that prevailed until the end of the nineteenth century.

Now, however, as the deeper meaning of quantum mechanics is finally emerging after a century of confusion, and as AI begins to transform the world, it is arguable that we stand at the cusp of an equally radical paradigm shift, as we move from a material, atomistic conception of reality to an abstract, relational one.

Relationalism as a philosophy means somewhat different things to different people, but fundamentally consists of the proposition that there are no such things as “intrinsic properties”, or properties that inhere within entities without reference to other entities. All properties are relational in nature. In s, this is expressed in the idea that all observed physical properties represent relations between systems rather than inherent properties of those systems. In my view — shared by some but not all those who espouse some variant of relationalism — we need to…