The Nature of Spacetime (Version 2.0)

Abstract

This paper proposes a framework for understanding the nature of spacetime. The entire paper revolves around a single thread: Humanity's longstanding failure to understand the nature of spacetime is not due to insufficient physical knowledge, but because we have persistently attempted to use the language of "matter" to understand "spacetime" itself—the tool and the object do not belong to the same category. The core theses are as follows: (1) Spacetime is not a background, not a container, not a stage—spacetime is the presentation of relations, the manifestation of complexity. (2) The speed of light is the limit of the physical level, not the limit of spacetime quantities—the "superluminal" aspects of quantum entanglement and cosmic expansion are results of hierarchical reclassification, not paradoxes. (3) Black holes are extreme distortions of the relational network, not the termination of relations—relations themselves possess elasticity and self-repairing capacity. (4) Quantum theory is investigating the underlying grammar of spacetime itself—entanglement, superposition, and collapse are the ways in which spacetime manifests in its unlocked state. (5) Determinacy is the prerequisite for perception and understanding—the reason we can perceive and understand the world lies, at root, in the fact that the world is determinate. This paper does not attempt to provide a definitive answer to "what spacetime is," but rather offers a falsifiable, extensible, and transposable framework for understanding.