Imagine, if you would, three identical piles of wood. Let us for the sake of argument also consider them completely and utterly identical in all respects, that is to say, let us not consider the potential that there exists any difference whatsoever betwixt them, a situation which is not true in reality - as obviously everything is minutely different - but which serves to elleminate a tangential argument about "oh, but they aren't fully the same!" which avoids the main target and would simply be a strawman exercise in futility. Now, two of these piles are used to build a bridge and a house respectively, whilst the third is allowed to remain a pile. Owing to this choice, we have three seperate things - a house, a bridge, and a pile of wood - which differ from one another massively, yet are made of the exact same material. That one cannot reduce househood and bridgehood (as it were) to the constituent parts of the wood - which is evident in that the pile of wood shares none of the properties of bridgehood or househood - then speaks of the fact that a gestalt, or an emergent product of relation, is incapable of being reduced to that beneath it. In essence: Relation is a fundemental of existence, as important as space and time.

Interestingly, this is not the only revelation I would postulate for the primacy of relation in existence, but rather, would postulate that it plays a role in one other thing: It is the reason why causality is not, as Hume would argue, a non-real thing, or as Kant would say, a categorization of the mind, but rather something which is very much real and very much crucical. Let me explain why:

Relation consists of two or more things acting in concert producing something which could not be created from their constituent parts. Both the results, and the fact that the results could not have been achieved otherwise, is a reality. If the wood in the aforementioned example was not arranged in the shape of a bridge, it'd lack the quality of "bridgehood" which is fundementally incapable of being reduced to the logs themselves. Now, clearly, relation can also be removed, via removing the parts which breaks the relation. If enough wood was removed from the bridge, it would cease to be structurally stable - the relation of the bridge would be destroyed - and it would thus cease to have bridgehood upon collapse. It would become "formerrly a bridge, now just logs in a big collapsed heap". The amount of time something exists within relation is really then irrelevent, it could stand for a hundred years - such as the Brooklyn Bridge - or it could be as ephemeral as the contact betwixt a bat and a ball. Let us focus on the latter, though. Here is a classical example of a macroscopic causal event: A ball is thrown at a batter which, in turn, strikes the ball and sends it flying. Now, some people may think it is peculiar that this could be construed as a relational phenomena, but it is not so much once one looks at it. There is nothing in either the act of throwing the ball, nor striking the bat, which necessitates the ending. Done seperately, the ball is not struck. It is only when it is done at a specific time, in a specific place, and the throwing of the ball and the swinging of the bat act in concert, that the end result - a new relation not found in either thing - comes to be. One can reduce any other cause-and-effect event to relation in much the same way. Now, since causal relations are the same as other relations, which have also been shown to produce something real, and which must necessarily exist, every act of causality must similarly be real and must also necessarily exist, and is not, as Hume would have us think, a figment of habit, but an ontological truth.

To summarize this point simply: causality is a subset of relational constructs and is a reality.

Every cook knows this. The meal and the deliciousness of the meal don't depend much on the ingredients (as long as they are edible), but on what the cook makes of them.