A Rational Cosmology: Light's Distance-Dependent Rate of Relationship

Essay XLVIII

This is Essay XLVIII of Mr. Stolyarov's series, "A Rational Cosmology," which seeks to present objective, absolute, rationally grounded views of terms such as universe, matter, volume, space, time, motion, sound, light, forces, fields, and even the higher-order concepts of life, consciousness, and volition. See the index of all the essays in "A Rational Cosmology" here.

Since light is not an entity and thus cannot "travel" but is rather a relationship that can be transmitted, the idea of a "speed of light" can be rephrased as simply the idea that the relationship of light does not affect the target instantaneously, and is transmitted from the source at a certain rate.

The transmission of light is dependent on the distance between the source and target, which, as earlier shown, is also confirmed by simple ubiquitous observation of everyday phenomena.

The claim that there is a "speed of light" amounts to the assertion that a source entity 3*10⁸ meters away from the target entity and in a vacuum will affect the target entity one second from the time light was emitted.

The measure of this phenomenon, currently expressed in meters per second, is not truly a speed, but rather a rate of relationship. To be more precise, rational cosmology can assert the prerogative of renaming the concept of a "speed of light" to a distance-dependent rate of relationship (DDRR) which light does indeed exhibit.

Like all relationships wherein one entity acts upon another, light does not occur instantaneously. It is, like all relationships, structured so as to be fathomable via reason, and thus retains certain consistencies; the rate at which it is transmitted is constant given a certain constant medium separating the source and target.

When the nature of the medium changes, so does the nature of light's transmission and its rate. Since any medium absent a vacuum must by definition consist of other entities, the effect of light upon those entities delays the effect of light upon the original target entity. This is a proposition which logic itself would suggest even in the absence of in-depth particular observation.