This paper demonstrates that more than twenty major paradoxes in modern physics dissolve simultaneously under a single ontological shift: spacetime is not fundamental. No new forces, no new mathematics — only a base-layer correction.
Foundational paradoxes continue to persist in modern physics despite the remarkableempirical success of established theories. These paradoxes do not arise from failed predictionsor mathematical inconsistency, but from recurring conceptual tensions across quantummechanics, gravity, cosmology, and questions of identity, causality, and emergence.This paper examines twenty-four well-known paradoxes spanning these domains andproposes a unified resolution strategy. The analysis is methodological rather than technical:no new dynamics, particles, or forces are introduced, and no modifications to establishedformalisms are required. Instead, the paradoxes are shown to arise from a systematicconflation of descriptive levels, in which constructs native to effective theories are tacitlytreated as ontologically fundamental.By interpreting established theories as projection-level descriptions constrained by domain-specific validity, the paradoxes admit concise and uniform resolutions. Across all cases, themathematical frameworks remain intact; what changes is the interpretation of their ontologicalreach. The recurrence of this resolution pattern across independent and historically distinctparadoxes provides strong support for an ontological distinction between generative structureand effective physical description, articulated here in a deliberately restrained form.The resulting perspective reduces, rather than inflates, ontological commitments whilerestoring conceptual coherence across domains that are otherwise treated in isolation. Withoutspecifying the detailed nature of the generative level, the analysis establishes a unifiedinterpretive framework within which many longstanding foundational problems lose theirforce
This work proposes a minimal ontological framework aimed at systematically resolving key conceptual paradoxes of contemporary physics. The central claim is that many foundational difficulties of twentieth- and twenty-first-century physics arise not from empirical anomalies or mathematical inconsistencies, but from a conflation of mathematical formalism with ontological interpretation. On the basis of a small set of minimal ontological axioms, the work addresses and resolves ten fundamental paradoxes, including wave–particle duality, the measurement problem and collapse, the arrow of time, irreversibility, quantization, the nature of gravity, cosmological origin, the finiteness of the Universe, the status of singularities, and the information paradox. The proposed framework introduces no new physical entities and does not modify existing physical equations. Instead, it imposes strict ontological constraints from which these phenomena follow as necessary consequences. The work does not present an alternative physical theory, but rather an ontological foundation explaining why modern physical theories are successful and why they encounter inherent explanatory limits.
The core dilemma of modern physics stems from two unproven ontological presuppositions: that spacetime is an innate container preceding matter, and that matter is an entity composed of indivisible particles. These presuppositions have led to the fundamental split between general relativity and quantum mechanics, giving rise to a series of century-old unsolved problems such as wave-particle duality, the quantum measurement paradox, the nature of gravity, and dark matter and dark energy. Based on the sole unfalsifiable first principle that "the essence of cognition is succession", this paper deduces a complete ontological system through pure a priori reasoning: the authentic physical world consists solely of one-dimensional successive rays and their transverse coupling relations; time is the successive extension of rays, space is the network of coupling relations, matter is the steady state of closed coupling, and all interactions are different manifestations of coupling actions. Particles are not authentically existing entities, but rather point-like endpoint phenomena presented in the observer's phenomenal world when two rays undergo an all-or-nothing coupling. Based on this framework, this paper uniformly explains all core phenomena in both the microscopic quantum domain and the macroscopic relativistic domain in one go, resolves all traditional physical paradoxes at the ontological level, achieves the ontological unification of the four fundamental forces, and proposes three falsifiable core predictions. This paper demonstrates that all theories of traditional physics are approximate descriptions of the authentic physical world at the phenomenal level, and their fundamental error lies in mistaking "coupling endpoints" for "primitive entities", thereby reversing the causal relationship. Cognitive Succession Ontology provides a logically consistent and universally unified ultimate foundation for physics.
Abstract: For over a century, quantum mechanics has operated within an ontological void. While its mathematical formalism achieves unprecedented predictive success, the question of what actually exists remains unresolved. This paper proposes a radical ontological reformation: reality is not a singular spacetime continuum inhabited by particles, but rather an overlapping multiplicity of independent spatial manifolds—each carried by what we call an "observer" or material center. This single postulate, the Separated Universes Theory (SUT), dissolves three major philosophical crises in modern physics: the mystery of measurement, the paradox of non-locality, and the abandonment of determinism. By redefining locality within shared spatial manifolds, we demonstrate that Einstein’s core intuitions—realism and causality—can be fully reconciled with quantum phenomena without the need for "spooky action at a distance." This work seeks to provide the missing metaphysical foundation that physics has lacked since the Copenhagen capitulation, restoring the intelligibility of nature through a new geometric-energetic framework.
Abstract Modern physics faces a systemic crisis rooted in the incompatibility between General Relativity (GR) and Quantum Mechanics (QM). This crisis manifests in mathematical inconsistency, unresolved empirical anomalies, conceptual gaps, and the erosion of falsifiability in leading theoretical frameworks. The ZEBTS paradigm proposes a radical ontological shift: replacing spacetime as a fundamental entity with a generative hypergraph G*, whose dynamics produce all observable physical structures. This article presents the conceptual foundations of ZEBTS, formulates its principles, contrasts it with alternative approaches, and outlines its methodological and predictive framework.
“For me then this is the real problem with quantum theory: the apparently essential conflict between any sharp formulation and fundamental relativity. That is to say, we have an apparent incompatibility, at the deepest level, between the two fundamental pillars of contemporary theory...” J. S. Bell (2004, p. 171) The inability to delineate a unified physical ontology that accounts simultaneously for the laws of special relativity and the results of quantum experiments has been a defining problem in physics for more than 100 years. Although various primitive ontologies (including Bohmian pilot wave, spontaneous collapse, and objective collapse theories) along with wave function realism ontologies, many-worlds interpretations, and multi-field theories address the tension between special relativity and quantum mechanics, none has successfully resolved it. This analysis addresses the problem by positing an ontic, mixed ontology composed of a “discrete” 4D spacetime and a physical, ultra-high dimensional (3 x N) “Planck Space.” Together, Planck Space and the three spatial dimensions of 4D spacetime form a tightly integrated ((3 x N) + 3) hyperspace (the “Dual Ontology”). 4D spacetime’s three spatial dimensions and the N dimensions of Planck Space are composed of two substructures: discrete, three-dimensional, quantized units of space ("Planck Spheres") and an ontic State of Absolute Nothingness (the "SOAN") whose sole physical characteristic is onticness. Critically, the Dual Ontology’s structure replaces 1) the continuous, differentiable manifold of 4D spacetime with a discrete 4D spacetime and 2) mathematical 3N configuration spaces with a physical (3 x N) Planck Space. Moreover, structurally and dynamically, the Dual Ontology is predicated on the one-to-one mapping and identity between the Planck Spheres that simultaneously form 4D spacetime and Planck Space. The one-to-one mapping and identity physically and theoretically support an integrated quantum dynamics based upon the dynamic evolution of single and N-body quantum states in 4D spacetime in full compliance with the laws of special relativity and the instantaneous collapse of all quantum states in an ontic Planck Space, where special and general relativity and more generally, 4D spacetime’s laws of physics, do not apply.