Chapter 10: Lorentz Without Minkowski: Constraint Geometry

Special relativity begins with two postulates: the principle of relativity and the constancy of the speed of light. From these, the Lorentz group emerges as the symmetry group of Minkowski spacetime. This chapter derives the same group without either postulate. Lorentz covariance is not an axiom about the geometry of spacetime; it is a theorem about the structure of readouts from the boundary holonomy algebra H_∂[ω]. The Minkowski metric is not the ontological substrate of physics; it is a chart shadow—a convenient coordinate representation of the deeper τ³ structure. What orthodox physics interprets as the “geometry of spacetime” is the constraint geometry imposed by the τ³ fibration on the readout functors.