The Becoming of Possibility

Friday, 19 June 2026

2. The Curious Case of the Informative Gene

The afternoon sunlight had briefly defeated the rain, illuminating the Senior Common Room with a warmth entirely disproportionate to the season. Professor Quillibrace sat near the window, examining a botanical illustration whose margins were crowded with meticulous handwritten notes.

Mr Blottisham entered carrying a genetics textbook with unmistakable enthusiasm.

"Professor!"

Quillibrace looked up.

"Good afternoon, Blottisham."

"I believe I have found an example that even you cannot possibly object to."

"I await enlightenment."

"DNA."

"An admirable molecule."

"It contains the information required to build an organism."

Quillibrace regarded him for a moment.

"Does it?"

"Certainly."

"You sound unusually confident."

"Because this isn't philosophy."

"No?"

"It's biology."

Miss Elowen Stray arrived quietly with her notebook.

"Am I in time?"

"Barely," said Quillibrace. "Mr Blottisham has just assured me that philosophy has finally been defeated by molecular biology."

"Oh dear."

Blottisham ignored her.

"The matter is straightforward. Genes contain information. Cells read the information. Organisms develop."

Quillibrace nodded thoughtfully.

"I wonder..."

Blottisham sighed.

"There it is."

"What?"

"The wondering."

"I find it useful."

"I'm sure you do."

Quillibrace smiled.

"When you say that genes contain information..."

"Yes?"

"...what sort of thing do you suppose information to be?"

Blottisham looked puzzled.

"Information."

"I heard the word."

"It's... instructions."

"Very good."

"What more do you want?"

"What are instructions?"

Blottisham hesitated.

"They tell something what to do."

"So instructions exist independently of whoever follows them?"

"Of course."

Quillibrace reached for the botanical illustration.

"What does this drawing instruct me to do?"

"It doesn't."

"So it contains no information?"

"No, that's different."

"How?"

"It's a picture."

"Indeed."

Miss Stray looked over the Professor's shoulder.

"My grandmother couldn't identify that plant."

"No?"

"She'd simply see lines on paper."

Quillibrace nodded.

"So the information isn't available to everyone."

"Obviously not."

"It depends upon..."

"Knowledge."

"I see."

He placed the illustration back on the table.

"So knowledge contributes something."

"Naturally."

"And without that contribution?"

Blottisham shrugged.

"The information can't be used."

Quillibrace raised an eyebrow.

"Can it even be said to exist?"

Blottisham frowned.

"Well..."

The Professor continued gently.

"Suppose we discover a sequence of symbols carved into a rock on a distant planet."

"Very exciting."

"Do the symbols contain information?"

"Certainly."

"About what?"

"We don't know."

"So what information do they presently contain?"

Blottisham opened his mouth.

Then closed it again.

Miss Stray looked thoughtful.

"It seems we would know they were patterned."

"Yes."

"But not what the pattern was for."

"Quite."

"So the pattern exists."

"It does."

"The information..."

She paused.

"...appears to depend upon how the pattern is taken."

Quillibrace smiled faintly.

"A useful observation."

Blottisham shook his head.

"No, no. DNA is different."

"In what respect?"

"It has been shaped by evolution."

"I quite agree."

"So evolution has written the instructions."

Quillibrace leaned back.

"Has it?"

"Obviously."

"What language did evolution use?"

Blottisham laughed.

"Not literally."

"Ah."

"So we have another metaphor."

"It's a very good metaphor."

"I quite agree."

The Professor folded his hands.

"But good metaphors sometimes become invisible."

"What do you mean?"

"We stop noticing that they are metaphors."

A silence settled over the room.

Miss Stray spoke first.

"Professor..."

"Yes?"

"Suppose I have the complete DNA sequence of an oak tree."

"Very well."

"And I also have an empty laboratory."

"Yes."

"Can I grow the tree?"

Blottisham answered immediately.

"Of course not."

"Why not?"

"You need the cell."

"And?"

"The developmental environment."

"And?"

"Nutrients."

"And?"

"The whole biological machinery."

Quillibrace waited.

Blottisham stared into space.

"Oh."

"No hurry."

"The DNA..."

"Yes?"

"...doesn't build anything by itself."

"No."

"It only..."

He searched for the words.

"...works within..."

Miss Stray finished the sentence quietly.

"...a developmental system."

Quillibrace inclined his head.

"Exactly."

Blottisham looked unconvinced.

"But surely the information is still inside the DNA."

Quillibrace reached for the sugar bowl.

"How much sweetness does this spoon contain?"

"The spoon?"

"Yes."

"None."

"So sweetness belongs..."

"...to the sugar."

"And if no one had ever tasted sweetness?"

Blottisham groaned.

"That's unfair."

"I merely wondered."

Miss Stray smiled.

"I think the Professor is asking whether we've mistaken a relation for a substance again."

Quillibrace looked pleasantly surprised.

"A very economical summary."

Blottisham looked from one to the other.

"So you're saying information doesn't exist?"

"Oh, I shouldn't say that."

"No?"

"I should merely ask whether information is the sort of thing that can be poured into a molecule."

The room was quiet.

Outside, a gardener was pruning roses with remarkable concentration.

Miss Stray closed her notebook.

"It seems odd."

"What does?"

"The more biology discovers about development..."

"Yes?"

"...the less development resembles a set of instructions."

Quillibrace looked towards the window.

"Science has a curious habit."

"Which is?"

"It reveals increasingly intricate relations."

Blottisham sighed.

"And then?"

"And then we describe them as though someone had hidden little things inside other little things."

Blottisham laughed despite himself.

"You really think that's what we're doing?"

Quillibrace smiled.

"My dear Blottisham..."

"Yes?"

"I think we often mistake participation for possession."

The fire gave a soft crack.

No one spoke for several moments.

Miss Stray finally broke the silence.

"I wonder..."

Quillibrace looked up.

"...whether that isn't exactly the same mistake we discussed last week."

The Professor's smile was almost imperceptible.

"I rather hoped you would notice."

1. The Noun in the Neuron

The Senior Common Room at St Anselm's

The rain had settled into the sort of steady determination that seemed to belong permanently to old colleges. The windows of the Senior Common Room glowed amber against the grey afternoon. Professor Quillibrace sat beside the fire, turning the pages of a scientific journal with the mild concentration of someone reading a particularly careful crossword.

Mr Blottisham arrived carrying tea and an expression of cheerful certainty.

"I've just read the most extraordinary neuroscience paper."

Quillibrace looked up.

"Oh?"

"They've found neurons that respond specifically to nouns."

"Have they indeed?"

"Quite remarkable. It seems we've finally located the building blocks of language."

Quillibrace folded the journal carefully.

"What precisely have they found?"

Blottisham blinked.

"I've just told you."

"No," said Quillibrace pleasantly. "You've told me what you believe they have found. What did the experiment actually observe?"

"Neurons firing."

"Good."

"Specifically before nouns."

Quillibrace nodded.

"So the experiment observed neurons whose activity systematically accompanies the production of what linguists classify as nouns."

"Exactly."

"And from this you conclude..."

"...that the neurons contain the grammatical machinery."

Quillibrace stirred his tea thoughtfully.

"Contain?"

Blottisham frowned.

"Well... perhaps 'encode'."

"I see."

A brief silence followed.

Miss Elowen Stray entered quietly, carrying three fresh cups of tea.

"I hope I'm not interrupting."

"On the contrary," said Quillibrace. "Mr Blottisham has just improved 'contain' into 'encode'."

She smiled.

"Has the problem improved as well?"

Blottisham sighed.

"I don't see the difficulty."

Quillibrace leaned back.

"Suppose I write the word cat on this notepad."

He did so.

CAT

"There."

Blottisham nodded.

"Does the ink contain a cat?"

"Obviously not."

"Does it contain the meaning of cat?"

"Well..."

"It must," said Quillibrace gently, "if meanings are things that words carry."

"No, no. The ink carries the word."

"And the word carries the meaning?"

"Precisely."

"So where, exactly, is the meaning?"

Blottisham hesitated.

"In the word."

Quillibrace slid the notepad across the table.

"It appears to contain only ink."

Miss Stray looked at the page.

"My niece couldn't read that."

"No?"

"She's three."

"So," Quillibrace continued, "if the meaning is already inside the word, why does she fail to find it?"

Blottisham laughed.

"Because she hasn't learned English."

"Ah."

Another pause.

"So learning English changes..."

"The reader."

"Not the ink?"

"No."

"Curious."

Blottisham shifted in his chair.

"You know perfectly well what I mean."

"I probably do."

"But you're being impossible."

"I hope only temporarily."

Miss Stray looked thoughtfully at the word on the page.

"It seems the marks don't change."

"No."

"The meaning changes with the person reading."

Quillibrace inclined his head.

"Or perhaps..."

She considered.

"...perhaps the meaning only comes into existence when someone capable of reading encounters the marks."

Blottisham waved a hand.

"That's merely interpretation."

Quillibrace smiled.

"Indeed."

"As though interpretation weren't the whole point."

Blottisham ignored this.

"The neurons are different."

"How so?"

"They don't contain meanings. They contain grammatical functions."

"I see."

"And grammatical functions are..."

"Nouns."

Quillibrace waited.

Blottisham frowned.

"Well..."

"Do neurons fire before nouns because they contain nounness?"

"No."

"Or because they participate in producing utterances that linguists subsequently analyse as containing nouns?"

Blottisham looked into his teacup.

"I suppose..."

"Take your time."

"...the second."

"Excellent."

Miss Stray leaned forward.

"Then the noun isn't inside the neuron."

"It would seem not."

"It's something recognised within the utterance."

Quillibrace nodded.

"Or more precisely, within a particular linguistic construal of the utterance."

Blottisham rubbed his forehead.

"I don't like this."

"No?"

"It feels as though things keep escaping."

"Escaping?"

"First the meaning isn't in the word."

"Apparently not."

"Now the noun isn't in the neuron."

"So it seems."

"What next?"

Quillibrace smiled into the fire.

"That depends."

"On what?"

"On how many other things we've quietly imagined to be inside other things."

The room fell silent.

Outside, rain continued its patient conversation with the windows.

Miss Stray broke the silence.

"Professor..."

"Yes?"

"I'm beginning to wonder whether this isn't really about neurons at all."

Quillibrace's eyes twinkled.

"I was hoping someone might notice."

Blottisham looked from one to the other.

"You two have become insufferably cryptic."

Quillibrace stood and returned the journal to the table.

"My dear Blottisham."

"Yes?"

"The experiment is perfectly admirable."

"I thought you'd disagree."

"Not at all."

"Then what troubles you?"

Quillibrace considered the question for a moment.

"The experiment reveals relations."

"Yes?"

"We explain them by inventing containers."

Blottisham stared blankly.

Miss Stray quietly closed her notebook.

"I think," she said, "that may become rather important."

The fire crackled softly.

No one disagreed.

7. Words Don't Carry Meanings

It is perhaps the most familiar idea in the philosophy of language.

Words carry meanings.

It appears everywhere: in education, in linguistics, in cognitive science, in everyday speech. We speak as though meanings are objects attached to words, ready to be transmitted from speaker to listener like parcels in a postal system.

A sentence is composed, sent, received, decoded.

Meaning travels.

Language carries it.

The metaphor is so deeply embedded that it is rarely noticed as a metaphor at all.

Yet it quietly introduces a picture of language that deserves closer scrutiny.

Consider a simple word:

tree

We tend to imagine that this word carries with it a meaning—something like a mental object or concept that listeners retrieve when they hear the sound.

But now consider what happens in practice.

A botanist, a poet, a child, and a carpenter all hear the same word.

Do they receive the same meaning?

If meaning is something carried by the word itself, the answer should be yes.

But experience suggests otherwise.

What is activated is not a single contained object, but a distributed field of associations, distinctions, histories, practices, and possibilities.

Meaning varies with context, history, and situation.

It is not stable in the way physical transfer would require.

This already suggests a first displacement.

Meaning is not located inside words.

But the deeper issue is not simply where meaning is.

It is what kind of thing meaning is assumed to be.

The “carrying” metaphor presupposes that meaning exists prior to and independent of the event of interpretation. Words are then imagined as vessels that transport it across space.

But this raises an immediate difficulty.

Where is meaning before it is expressed?

Where is it stored before it is heard?

What form does it take when no one is interpreting it?

The temptation is to say it exists in the mind of the speaker.

But this only relocates the problem.

Now we must ask: how does meaning move from one mind to another without being altered, fragmented, or reconstructed?

At each step, the image of transfer becomes increasingly strained.

What if the problem lies not in communication, but in the underlying metaphor of transmission itself?

Consider a different possibility.

When a word is spoken, nothing is transported.

Instead, a relational event is initiated.

Sound patterns unfold.

Bodies respond.

Histories of use are activated.

Contexts constrain interpretation.

New distinctions become available.

Meaning is not carried across this process.

It is actualised within it.

This shifts the entire picture of language.

Words are no longer containers of meaning.

They are participation points in a larger semiotic system.

A word does not contain meaning any more than a musical note contains a melody.

A note only becomes musical within a system of relations: rhythm, harmony, expectation, cultural training, listening practices.

Outside those relations, it is simply a vibration.

Likewise, a word becomes meaningful only within a system of construal—linguistic, social, historical, situational.

Meaning is not inside the word.

It is not inside the speaker.

It is not inside the listener.

It is not a substance moving between them.

It is the event of coordination across them.

This is why misunderstanding is not a failure of transmission.

It is a different actualisation.

The same word can participate in different meanings because it enters different relational configurations.

Meaning is therefore not invariant content carried by form.

It is the structured unfolding of form-in-use.

Once this is seen, many familiar puzzles begin to dissolve.

We no longer need to ask how words manage to “encode” abstract concepts.

We no longer need to imagine hidden meanings waiting behind sentences.

We no longer need to posit mental objects being exchanged through linguistic channels.

Instead, we can observe something simpler and more subtle:

language is a system in which meaning happens.

Not as a transfer.

Not as a possession.

But as an occurrence.

This does not diminish language.

On the contrary, it makes it more remarkable.

Words are not inert carriers of pre-existing meanings.

They are active participants in the continual generation of meaning itself.

Every utterance is a small experiment in coordination.

Every conversation is a locally stabilised event of shared construal.

Every misunderstanding is a divergence in that process rather than a failure of transmission.

Meaning is not what words have.

It is what words do, together with speakers, listeners, contexts, histories, and situations.

And once this is recognised, the entire series quietly folds back on itself.

Neurons do not contain nouns.

Genes do not contain information.

Particles do not have properties.

Models do not represent reality.

Brains do not think.

Information does not exist as a substance.

And words do not carry meanings.

Because in every case, what we thought was contained turns out to be something that is actualised within a relational event.

Not things with properties.

But events in which distinctions arise.

Not carriers of meaning.

But conditions under which meaning happens.

And perhaps the deepest shift of all is this:

We were never dealing with a world made of things that hold other things inside them.

We were always dealing with a world in which relations become actual.

6. Information Doesn't Exist

We live in an age saturated with information.

Genes are said to contain it. Brains are said to process it. Communication systems are said to transmit it. Physics, biology, linguistics, computer science, and cognitive science all speak fluently in its vocabulary.

It has become one of the most universal explanatory terms in contemporary science.

And yet it is rarely asked what kind of thing information actually is.

At first glance, the answer seems obvious.

Information is what is carried in signals, encoded in DNA, stored in memory, transmitted across networks, and extracted from data.

But each of these descriptions already assumes something that deserves closer attention.

To say that information is carried is to invoke a physical metaphor.

To say that it is encoded is to assume a code that precedes interpretation.

To say that it is stored is to imagine a substance persisting in a container.

In each case, information is treated as though it were a kind of invisible stuff distributed across different substrates.

This is where the difficulty begins.

Consider a simple example.

A string of marks on a page:

1011001

Does it contain information?

The answer seems to be yes.

But now ask: information about what?

About binary arithmetic? A genetic sequence? A computer instruction? A symbolic encoding system? Without a system of interpretation, the marks remain simply marks.

Nothing intrinsic to them determines what they mean.

The same pattern can function as different information within different relational contexts.

What changes is not the pattern itself.

What changes is the construal.

This suggests something important.

Information is not a property of a physical configuration considered in isolation.

It is a relational effect that emerges when a configuration is taken up within a system of interpretation, distinction, and use.

A genome does not contain information in the way a bottle contains liquid.

A DNA sequence participates in a complex developmental system that has been shaped through evolutionary history. Within that system, certain variations reliably correlate with certain developmental outcomes. We describe this stability using informational language.

But the language describes a relation.

It does not name a substance.

The same is true in neuroscience.

Neural signals are said to encode sensory information, motor commands, or cognitive content. Yet these signals acquire their informational character only within the interpretive framework that relates neural activity to behavioural, environmental, and experimental conditions.

Outside that framework, they are simply electrochemical events.

Not messages.

Not representations.

Not packets of meaning.

Likewise in physics, where entropy and information are often treated as interchangeable quantities. Yet even here, information depends upon a partitioning of the world into states, distinctions, and coarse-grained descriptions. Change the partition, and the “amount of information” changes with it.

Across all these domains, a consistent pattern emerges.

Information appears whenever a system of distinctions is imposed upon a domain of variation.

It is not a thing in the world.

It is a way of organising the world.

This does not make information illusory.

But it does make it dependent.

Dependent on systems that distinguish, interpret, and act.

Dependent on the relational structures within which patterns become meaningful.

From this perspective, information is not fundamental.

It is derivative.

It arises when a difference is taken up within a system capable of responding to that difference.

A signal is not information in itself.

It becomes information when it is actualised as such within a relational field of interpretation and use.

This is why the idea that genes “contain information” or brains “process information” is so powerful—and so misleading.

It encourages us to imagine that information is already fully formed inside a physical substrate, waiting to be decoded.

But nothing in the substrate guarantees this.

DNA does not interpret itself.

Neurons do not read themselves.

Paper does not understand writing.

Information appears only when construal occurs.

This is the crucial shift.

Not from physical to mental.

But from substance to relation.

From contained meaning to actualised distinction.

From thing-like information to event-like information.

Seen this way, information does not exist as a fundamental ingredient of reality.

What exists are structured differences within physical systems, and the relational practices through which those differences are taken up as meaningful, functional, or significant.

Information is the name we give to that uptake.

It is not what the world is made of.

It is how certain differences become available within it.

And once this is recognised, the familiar picture reverses.

We do not live in a world made of information.

We live in a world in which information occasionally happens.

5. Brains Don't Think

It sounds absurd.

Of course brains think.

Brain scans reveal patterns of activity associated with memory, attention, decision-making, language, and imagination. Damage particular regions and particular cognitive abilities disappear. Every modern neuroscience textbook assumes that thought is produced by the brain.

Surely the matter is settled.

Perhaps not.

The question is not whether brains are necessary for thinking.

They plainly are.

The question is whether thinking is the sort of thing that can be located inside a brain.

Those are very different claims.

Consider a conversation.

Two people speak.

Words are exchanged.

Questions are asked.

Ideas emerge that neither participant anticipated.

At what point, exactly, does the thinking occur?

Is it inside one brain?

Inside the other?

Half in each?

Or does the thinking emerge through the unfolding interaction itself?

We instinctively answer the first question because we have inherited a powerful image of thought as something hidden inside individual minds. The brain becomes a container within which thoughts are generated before eventually escaping into speech.

Neuroscience has often reinforced this picture by identifying the neural processes that accompany different cognitive activities.

These discoveries are remarkable.

But they do not demonstrate that thinking itself is located inside the neural tissue.

They demonstrate something slightly different.

Brains participate in thinking.

The distinction may appear trivial.

It is not.

Imagine attending an orchestra.

The performance depends upon violins, cellos, brass, percussion, a conductor, musicians, an audience, an acoustic space, and a shared musical tradition.

Suppose someone points to the first violin and asks,

"Where is the symphony?"

The violin is indispensable.

Remove it and the performance changes.

Yet no one imagines that the symphony resides inside the instrument.

The symphony exists only as an actualised performance.

Thinking appears remarkably similar.

Neurons fire.

Muscles move.

Words are spoken.

Gestures are made.

Objects are manipulated.

Other people respond.

New possibilities emerge.

Thinking is not hidden inside one component of this extraordinarily complex system.

It is actualised through the coordinated activity of the system itself.

Modern cognitive science increasingly points in this direction.

Researchers study embodied cognition, distributed cognition, ecological psychology, cultural evolution, and social interaction. They investigate how thinking depends upon bodies, environments, tools, languages, and communities rather than isolated nervous systems alone.

Again and again, the science becomes more relational.

Yet our explanations often retreat to the familiar language of brains producing thoughts.

Perhaps the difficulty lies in the image itself.

To say that brains think is rather like saying that lungs breathe.

Strictly speaking, lungs do not breathe.

Organisms breathe.

Lungs participate in breathing.

Likewise, brains do not think.

People think.

And people think through relations extending far beyond their nervous systems.

The language they inherit.

The conversations they enter.

The books they read.

The cultures they inhabit.

The environments they navigate.

The symbolic systems through which entirely new possibilities become available.

None of this diminishes the extraordinary importance of the brain.

Without brains, human thinking as we know it would not occur.

But necessity should not be confused with location.

Oxygen is necessary for breathing.

No one therefore concludes that breathing happens inside oxygen.

The same confusion quietly accompanies much contemporary neuroscience.

Neural activity becomes increasingly sophisticated.

Brain imaging becomes increasingly precise.

Correlations become increasingly detailed.

Then, almost unnoticed, participation becomes identity.

The brain is no longer one indispensable participant in thinking.

It becomes the place where thinking supposedly occurs.

The experiment itself has not demonstrated this.

The ontology has supplied it.

Relational ontology begins elsewhere.

Thinking is not an object hidden inside an organ.

Nor is it a substance flowing through neurons.

Thinking is an event.

It is the continual actualisation of possibilities through the coordinated relations among biological systems, symbolic systems, material environments, and other thinkers.

Brains are indispensable participants in that process.

They shape it profoundly.

They constrain it continuously.

They make it possible.

But they do not contain thought.

The mistake is understandable.

For centuries we have searched for the place where thought resides.

Perhaps the search itself has been misguided.

Perhaps thought is not located because it is not the kind of thing that has a location.

Like a conversation.

Like a symphony.

Like meaning itself.

Brains do not think.

Brains participate in thinking.

And once that distinction is recognised, the remarkable achievements of neuroscience become no less impressive.

They simply become part of a much larger story about how possibility becomes actual.

4. Models Don't Represent Reality

Ask almost anyone what a scientific model is, and the answer will probably sound something like this:

A model is a simplified representation of reality.

It is an appealing idea.

Maps represent landscapes. Scale models represent buildings. Diagrams represent machines. Scientific theories, we naturally suppose, represent the world.

The metaphor seems so obvious that we rarely stop to examine it.

Perhaps we should.

The history of science is littered with successful models that describe the same phenomena in remarkably different ways. Light has been modelled as particles, as waves, as electromagnetic fields, and as quantum systems. Matter has been described using atoms, fields, strings, and geometrical structures. Even space and time have been reconceived repeatedly.

If models are representations, which one represents reality correctly?

Perhaps none of them.

Or perhaps that question misunderstands what models are doing.

Consider a map.

A road map does not represent a mountain range in the same way as a geological survey. A weather map does not represent political boundaries. A nautical chart ignores features essential to a hiking map.

None of these maps is false.

Each is organised for a different purpose.

The map is not attempting to reproduce the landscape in miniature.

It is making particular distinctions useful.

Scientific models behave in much the same way.

A model does not present reality exactly as it is.

It organises possible observations in ways that make certain relations visible.

The familiar language of representation quietly encourages us to imagine that somewhere behind every model lies a complete reality waiting to be copied with increasing accuracy.

Yet scientific practice rarely proceeds in this manner.

Scientists build models because particular questions demand particular distinctions. Different models reveal different regularities. Some models become extraordinarily successful within one domain while proving almost useless in another.

This is not a failure of science.

It is precisely how science progresses.

The trouble begins when we mistake the usefulness of a model for evidence that it mirrors reality itself.

A subway map offers a simple illustration.

No one mistakes the coloured lines of a subway diagram for the city itself. Distances are distorted. Streets disappear. Rivers are simplified. Entire neighbourhoods may be omitted.

The map succeeds precisely because it leaves so much out.

Its power lies not in representing everything but in organising the distinctions relevant to travelling through a transport network.

Scientific models achieve something remarkably similar.

They foreground certain relations while backgrounding others.

The resulting organisation is not arbitrary.

It is disciplined by observation, experiment, mathematics, and continual empirical testing.

But none of this requires that the model exist as a miniature duplicate of reality.

The representational metaphor quietly invites another confusion.

If a model represents reality, then success is naturally interpreted as correspondence between the model and the world.

But what if successful science depends less upon correspondence than upon the capacity to generate fruitful construals?

A model allows us to ask new questions.

It allows us to make new predictions.

It allows us to recognise new phenomena.

Most importantly, it allows us to make distinctions that were previously unavailable.

Seen from this perspective, a scientific model is not a mirror held up to reality.

It is an instrument of construal.

This does not make reality subjective.

Reality continues to constrain every successful model. Experiments still fail. Predictions remain testable. Nature stubbornly refuses to cooperate with inadequate theories.

The world is not invented by our models.

But neither is it simply copied by them.

Between invention and imitation lies something more interesting.

Construal.

A model participates in the actualisation of phenomena by making particular relational distinctions available. It opens one way of seeing while necessarily closing others. Different models therefore reveal different aspects of the world's relational organisation without requiring that any one of them constitute reality itself.

This observation explains something curious about the history of science.

Again and again, revolutionary theories are not created by discovering new objects.

They emerge by reorganising existing relations.

The mathematics changes.

The distinctions change.

The phenomena become newly intelligible.

Reality itself has not changed.

Our construal of it has.

Nothing in scientific practice becomes less rigorous under this interpretation.

Models remain indispensable.

Prediction remains essential.

Experiment remains the final discipline upon speculation.

What changes is the role we assign to models.

They are no longer miniature replicas of an independently structured world.

They are disciplined instruments through which particular relational organisations become available to inquiry.

Models do not represent reality.

They participate in construal.

And perhaps that is why the history of science has been so extraordinarily creative—not because humanity has gradually assembled a perfect picture of reality, but because we have continually discovered new ways of making reality intelligible.

3. Particles Don't Have Properties

One of the most enduring images in science is that of the particle.

We imagine tiny objects moving through space, each carrying its own collection of properties: mass, charge, momentum, spin, position. These properties are thought to belong to the particle itself, much as colour belongs to an apple or weight belongs to a stone.

Quantum physics has spent the better part of a century complicating this picture.

Yet remarkably, our everyday language has hardly changed.

Open almost any popular account of quantum mechanics and you will still read that particles have properties. The mystery, we are told, is that these properties somehow remain indefinite until measured.

The experiment, however, suggests something rather different.

Again and again, quantum experiments reveal that what can be observed depends upon the experimental arrangement through which the observation is made. Change the arrangement and different aspects of the phenomenon become available. Alter the relational configuration and the observed outcome changes with it.

This has often been described as one of the great mysteries of modern physics.

Perhaps the mystery lies elsewhere.

Perhaps the difficulty begins the moment we assume that properties exist independently of the relations through which they become observable.

Consider a familiar example.

Suppose someone asks for the north side of a mountain.

The request makes perfect sense.

But remove every point of orientation—every compass direction, every horizon, every observer—and what becomes of "north"?

The mountain remains.

North does not.

North is not a substance hidden inside the mountain.

It is a relational distinction that emerges within a particular system of orientation.

Properties in quantum physics appear surprisingly similar.

Position, momentum, polarisation, and countless other measurable quantities are not simply extracted from particles like objects retrieved from a box. They become determinate through carefully specified experimental relations.

The experiments themselves repeatedly demonstrate this.

Yet the accompanying explanations often continue to speak as though the properties had always been quietly residing inside the particle, waiting for the correct measurement to reveal them.

The result is an endless succession of paradoxes.

How can a particle possess incompatible properties?

How can measurement disturb what was already there?

How can observation change reality?

Each question quietly assumes the very ontology under dispute.

It assumes that properties belong to independently existing objects.

Relational ontology begins elsewhere.

A particle is not first given its complete collection of intrinsic properties before entering into relation with the rest of the universe.

Rather, properties are actualised under particular relational cuts.

The phrase is important.

A relational cut does not create reality out of nothing.

Nor does it merely reveal a reality already complete.

It actualises a particular distinction within an underlying field of possibility.

The property belongs to the event, not to an isolated object.

This interpretation does not diminish the remarkable achievements of quantum physics.

Quite the opposite.

It allows the experiments to speak in their own voice.

For decades, physicists have shown that changing the experimental arrangement changes what becomes physically determinate. Entangled systems exhibit correlations that cannot be understood by treating their components as independently property-bearing objects. Complementary measurements reveal mutually exclusive aspects of quantum systems without implying that one hidden set of properties lies beneath them all.

Again and again, the experiments point toward relation.

Again and again, our explanations retreat toward substance.

The familiar language of particles carrying intrinsic properties is deeply intuitive. It reflects centuries of thinking about the world as a collection of independently existing things.

Quantum physics has steadily eroded that picture.

The experiments themselves are not confused.

Our ontology is.

Perhaps the real lesson of quantum mechanics has never been that the universe behaves strangely.

Perhaps it is that our inherited picture of what a thing is has quietly ceased to fit the evidence.

The world revealed by modern physics appears less like a collection of objects carrying their own properties than an evolving network of relations through which particular distinctions become actual.

Particles remain indispensable.

Properties remain measurable.

Nothing in the experimental science is lost.

What changes is where we locate those properties.

Not inside isolated things.

But within the relational events through which they are actualised.

Particles do not have properties.

Properties emerge through relational cuts.

And once that possibility is entertained, many of quantum physics' greatest mysteries begin to look rather less mysterious than the ontology we have been using to explain them.

2. Genes Don't Contain Information

If you have ever opened a biology textbook, you have probably encountered a familiar claim:

Genes contain the information needed to build an organism.

It is such a commonplace that it scarcely invites reflection. Genes are said to store information, cells read that information, and organisms emerge from the execution of a genetic programme.

The metaphor has been enormously successful. It has inspired generations of research and provided an intuitive way to explain heredity. Like all good metaphors, however, it eventually risks becoming invisible.

When that happens, we begin mistaking the metaphor for the ontology.

The trouble begins with a deceptively simple question.

What exactly is this information that genes supposedly contain?

Consider a strand of DNA removed from a living cell.

Chemically, nothing has changed. The sequence of nucleotides remains precisely the same.

Yet outside the extraordinarily complex environment of a living organism, that DNA does nothing. It constructs nothing. It develops nothing. It specifies nothing.

It simply exists as a remarkably stable molecule.

Whatever "genetic information" may be, it cannot be something that resides inside the DNA alone.

The familiar blueprint metaphor quietly encourages us to imagine otherwise. Blueprints already contain the building they describe. A competent builder simply follows the instructions.

Development is not like that.

Every organism emerges through the continual interaction of genes, proteins, cells, tissues, physical forces, chemical gradients, environmental conditions, evolutionary history, and chance. Alter any one of these relationships and development changes—often dramatically.

Genes do not operate independently of these relations.

They operate through them.

Modern developmental biology has increasingly revealed precisely this picture. Genes regulate one another. Cells exchange chemical signals. Embryos continually respond to their changing environments. Development unfolds through an intricate web of reciprocal interactions extending across multiple scales.

In other words, the science has become progressively more relational.

Yet the language often remains stubbornly substantialist.

We continue speaking as though genes contain instructions waiting to be read.

The metaphor is understandable.

It is also misleading.

Suppose we say that a musical score contains a symphony.

In one sense, that is perfectly ordinary language.

But strictly speaking, the score does not contain music.

It contains marks on paper.

The symphony emerges only through the coordinated activity of musicians, instruments, acoustics, listeners, and the cultural practices through which those marks become meaningful performances.

The score participates in the conditions under which the symphony may be actualised.

It does not contain the symphony.

DNA occupies a remarkably similar position.

Its nucleotide sequence participates in an immensely sophisticated developmental system. Remove that system, and the sequence remains—but the organism does not.

This observation points toward a deeper philosophical mistake.

We often imagine information as though it were a substance capable of existing independently of the relations through which it functions.

But what if information is not a substance at all?

What if it is instead a way of describing stable relations within organised systems?

Seen from this perspective, genes do not contain information in the same sense that a bottle contains water.

Rather, genetic sequences participate in developmental possibilities that have emerged through billions of years of evolution.

Evolution has not filled genes with instructions.

Evolution has shaped relational systems within which particular genetic variations reliably participate in particular developmental trajectories.

The distinction is subtle.

It is also profound.

Nothing in modern genetics becomes less true.

DNA remains indispensable.

Genes remain central to heredity.

Genetic mutations continue to influence development in countless fascinating ways.

What changes is not the science.

It is the ontology through which we interpret it.

The remarkable achievement of contemporary biology has been to reveal the extraordinary relational organisation of living systems. Development is not the execution of a pre-written script but the continual actualisation of biological possibility through an evolving network of interactions.

Genes are indispensable participants in that process.

But they are not tiny containers of information hidden inside our cells.

They participate in developmental possibility.

And perhaps that is even more remarkable than the blueprint metaphor ever allowed us to imagine.

1. Neurons Don't Contain Nouns

Every few months a neuroscience paper appears with headlines announcing that we have finally discovered where language lives in the brain.

This month's contribution (here) reports an impressive technical achievement. By recording the activity of individual neurons in the human frontotemporal cortex during spontaneous conversation, researchers identified neurons whose activity reliably correlates with particular aspects of sentence production. Some neurons preferentially fire before nouns, others at the end of phrases, and still others appear sensitive to broader syntactic structure.

The experimental accomplishment is remarkable. Recording single-neuron activity during natural conversation was unimaginable only a few decades ago. The study represents an extraordinary advance in our ability to observe the neural dynamics accompanying speech.

The interpretation, however, deserves rather more caution.

The accompanying commentary announces that researchers have discovered "specialised linguistic building blocks" within the brain. One investigator is quoted as saying:

"We used to think language was this diffuse, whole-network phenomenon. But it turns out you have specific neurons that only care if a word is a noun."

This is an extraordinarily strong conclusion.

Unfortunately, it is not the conclusion the experiment demonstrates.

The experiment shows that particular neurons participate selectively during linguistic activity. It does not show that nouns themselves exist inside neurons.

That distinction matters.

The study begins with an existing linguistic analysis. Spoken utterances are first segmented into words, phrases, syntactic dependencies, semantic relations, and grammatical categories using contemporary linguistic models. Only then is neuronal activity compared with those pre-established categories.

In other words, the neuroscience depends entirely upon prior linguistic theory.

The neurons are not discovering nouns.

The linguists already have.

The experiment asks whether neural activity systematically covaries with distinctions that linguists have independently identified.

That is a perfectly legitimate scientific question. It is also a rather different question from asking whether nouns are physically located inside the cortex.

The shift from one claim to the other occurs almost invisibly.

Correlation quietly becomes constitution.

This move is familiar throughout contemporary cognitive neuroscience. We are repeatedly told that neurons "encode", "represent", or "store" meanings. These expressions are often useful shorthand. The trouble begins when the shorthand hardens into ontology.

Within a relational ontology, meaning is not an object that can be stored anywhere—not in books, not in computers, and certainly not in neurons.

Meaning is actualised through construal.

The symbolic phenomenon exists only as an instance within a relation between a symbolic potential and a construal that actualises it. Neural activity is undoubtedly one of the biological conditions that makes such actualisation possible. But conditions of possibility should not be confused with the symbolic phenomenon itself.

A neuron no more contains a noun than ink contains a sonnet.

Ink participates in the conditions under which a poem may be actualised. Remove the ink, and the printed poem disappears. But no one concludes that Shakespeare resides chemically inside carbon pigments.

Likewise, the selective firing of neurons before the utterance of a noun demonstrates that those neurons participate in the biological organisation of language production. It does not demonstrate that nouns are biological objects.

The title often given to these discoveries—"how the brain builds a sentence"—contains a similar ambiguity.

Does the brain build a sentence?

Or does the brain participate in the biological actualisation of speech, from which symbolic phenomena subsequently emerge under construal?

The difference is subtle but profound.

From a relational perspective, the sentence is not hidden inside the cortex awaiting expression. What exists is a coordinated biological system capable of actualising symbolic potential. Speech, gesture, sound waves, hearing, and interpretation together constitute the event through which a sentence comes into being as a symbolic phenomenon.

The sentence is not found in the neurons.

Neither is it found in the sound waves.

Nor is it found in the printed marks on a page.

It exists only as an actualised symbolic relation.

Ironically, some of the study's most interesting findings point in precisely this relational direction. The authors describe neurons whose activity depends upon context, whose behaviour changes as sentences unfold, and whose responses reflect evolving grammatical dependencies rather than isolated words.

These are fundamentally relational observations.

The neural organisation appears remarkably sensitive to changing patterns of relation across an unfolding utterance.

Yet the interpretation repeatedly retreats into the comforting language of internal representations and building blocks.

Perhaps that language reflects less what the experiment has discovered than the representational assumptions neuroscience continues to inherit from twentieth-century cognitive theory.

None of this diminishes the scientific achievement.

On the contrary, the experiment reveals something genuinely fascinating: the extraordinary degree to which biological systems become differentiated in support of symbolic activity.

What it does not reveal is where language is stored.

Because language is not the sort of thing that can be stored.

The remarkable neurons identified by the researchers are not miniature grammatical categories hiding inside the cortex. They are biological participants in the actualisation of symbolic potential.

Neurons do not contain nouns.

They participate in the conditions under which nouns become possible.

Thursday, 18 June 2026

Discussion X: On Finishing

The manuscript has remained on the central table for several weeks.

No one has returned it.

No one has asked whether it belongs to anyone.

Blottisham: Well.

That's the last chapter.

Quillibrace: Is it?

Blottisham: Unless someone has hidden an appendix.

Quillibrace: They usually do.

(A brief silence.)

Stray: It's rather an odd ending.

The manuscript never really resolves its argument.

Blottisham: Exactly.

I kept expecting a grand conclusion.

Quillibrace: And instead?

Blottisham: It simply stops.

Quillibrace: Does it?

Or does the author merely cease writing?

(A pause.)

Stray: Those aren't quite the same thing.

Quillibrace: No.

An argument occasionally continues after its author has become silent.

(They sit quietly for a moment.)

Blottisham: I've been wondering...

does the manuscript ever actually define certainty?

Stray: I don't think it does.

Blottisham: Isn't that rather careless?

Quillibrace: On the contrary.

Definitions are useful when one wishes to stabilise a concept.

This manuscript seems more interested in observing what certainty does than in deciding what it is.

Blottisham: Anthropology rather than metaphysics.

Quillibrace: Just so.

(Blottisham nods slowly.)

Stray: I think that's why the chapters feel different from ordinary arguments.

Each one observes another part of civilisation.

Universities.

Expertise.

Morality.

Planning.

Tradition.

The author keeps asking the same question in different places.

Quillibrace: Yes.

Not,

"What is certainty?"

But,

"What sort of creature behaves like this?"

(A thoughtful silence.)

Blottisham: Human beings, apparently.

Quillibrace: Apparently.

(They smile.)

Stray: Then perhaps the title is slightly misleading.

Quillibrace: How so?

Stray: It isn't really an anthropology of certainty.

It's an anthropology of ourselves.

Certainty merely happens to be the trail we followed through the forest.

(Quillibrace closes the manuscript very gently.)

Quillibrace: Miss Stray...

I believe you've just written the preface.

(A longer silence follows.)

Blottisham: Do you know what surprised me most?

Quillibrace: No.

Blottisham: The manuscript seems rather fond of civilisation.

I expected satire.

Instead I found...

affection.

Quillibrace: Good satire generally possesses precisely that quality.

Otherwise it becomes complaint.

Stray: It laughs because people are extraordinary.

Not because they're ridiculous.

Quillibrace: Quite.

Ridiculousness is simply one of the ways in which extraordinariness becomes visible.

(They laugh.)

Blottisham: Then what have we learned?

(Quillibrace does not answer immediately.)

Quillibrace: That may be the wrong question.

Blottisham: Really?

Quillibrace: I think the manuscript would prefer another.

Stray: Which one?

Quillibrace: What conversations has it made possible that were previously unavailable?

(Silence.)

Stray: Including this one.

Quillibrace: Especially this one.

(The room becomes very still.)

Blottisham: I suppose...

that's what books are really for.

Quillibrace: The better ones, certainly.

They do not merely provide thoughts.

They alter the thoughts people become capable of having together.

(No one speaks for a while.)

Stray: Shall we return the manuscript to the Library?

Quillibrace: Certainly not.

Someone else may wish to begin arguing with it.

The manuscript remained on the table.

By the end of term it had accumulated seventeen pencilled annotations, three pressed leaves, two contradictory bookmarks, an unexplained coffee stain, and what appeared to be the beginning of an entirely different conversation.

No catalogue entry was ever created.

Nevertheless, it became part of the College.

Discussion IX: On What Civilisations Remember

The manuscript has become noticeably easier to open than to close.

Blottisham: I think I've finally located the author's central mistake.

Quillibrace: Congratulations.

Where is it?

Blottisham: The manuscript keeps describing civilisation as though it were a collection of habits.

Surely civilisation is a collection of achievements.

Quillibrace: Is it?

Blottisham: Naturally.

Cathedrals.

Universities.

Constitutions.

Scientific discoveries.

Works of art.

Quillibrace: All admirable examples.

How many survive if the habits that produced them disappear?

(A pause.)

Blottisham: Fewer than one would hope.

Stray: The manuscript seems interested in that very distinction.

Achievements can often be inherited.

Habits must continually be performed.

Quillibrace: Exactly.

One inherits a library.

One must repeatedly inherit reading.

(Silence.)

Blottisham: That's annoyingly elegant.

Quillibrace: It was waiting to be said.

Stray: There's another sentence here.

"Civilisations remember procedurally before they remember intellectually."

I'm not entirely sure what it means.

Quillibrace: Think of language.

Children learn to speak long before they learn grammar.

Blottisham: Obviously.

Quillibrace: The practice arrives before the explanation.

Indeed, the explanation frequently arrives centuries later.

Stray: So perhaps societies become competent before they become self-conscious.

Quillibrace: Quite.

Reflection is a remarkably late invention.

(A thoughtful silence.)

Blottisham: Then civilisation isn't preserved by monuments.

Quillibrace: Not primarily.

Monuments remind.

Habits continue.

Blottisham: That's rather disappointing.

Quillibrace: Only if one has invested heavily in marble.

(They laugh.)

Stray: The manuscript also says traditions are often misunderstood.

People imagine traditions preserve the past.

Perhaps they preserve successful ways of entering the future.

(Quillibrace looks up slowly.)

Quillibrace: My dear Miss Stray...

that is extraordinarily perceptive.

(A brief silence.)

Blottisham: I don't quite see it.

Stray: A tradition isn't repeated because yesterday mattered.

It's repeated because tomorrow still requires something from it.

Quillibrace: Precisely.

Traditions that no longer assist the future eventually become history.

Traditions that still assist the future continue being traditions.

Blottisham: Then tradition is less conservative than I thought.

Quillibrace: Much less.

Successful traditions are remarkably adaptive.

Otherwise they would have concluded centuries ago.

(They continue reading.)

Blottisham: Here's a curious observation.

"Every civilisation develops techniques for surviving disappointment."

That seems oddly specific.

Quillibrace: Does it?

What are constitutions?

Appeal processes?

Scientific replication?

Insurance?

Peer review?

Blottisham: Administrative optimism?

Quillibrace: Administrative pessimism.

They assume human beings will occasionally be mistaken.

Stray: Or unlucky.

Quillibrace: Exactly.

The manuscript's deepest admiration seems reserved for institutions that expect fallibility without surrendering to it.

(A longer silence.)

Blottisham: I think I understand now.

The manuscript isn't celebrating uncertainty.

Quillibrace: No.

Blottisham: It's celebrating civilisation's astonishing patience with it.

Quillibrace: Beautifully put.

Stray: Which means civilisation doesn't consist in finally becoming certain.

It consists in discovering increasingly subtle ways of continuing despite uncertainty.

(Quillibrace closes the manuscript.)

Quillibrace: Yes.

And perhaps that is why civilisation appears simultaneously so fragile...

and so remarkably durable.

(The room remains quiet for some time.)

Blottisham: I must confess...

I thought this manuscript was about certainty.

Quillibrace: So did I.

For approximately the first three chapters.

The discussion concluded after an inconclusive attempt to determine whether the College's oldest traditions had survived because they were ancient or because they continued to solve problems no one had yet noticed had changed.

Tea was served according to a procedure whose origins remained obscure.

Discussion VIII: On Living in Tomorrow

The manuscript lies open at a chapter entitled "The Future."

Several pages have acquired folded corners.

No one is prepared to admit whose.

Blottisham: I have discovered something rather disappointing.

Quillibrace: About the future?

Blottisham: About strategic plans.

The manuscript claims they exist less to predict the future than to coordinate the present.

Surely that can't be right.

Quillibrace: Why not?

Blottisham: Because a strategic plan concerns the future.

It's there in the name.

Quillibrace: Is it?

Or is it perhaps an agreement about what people shall begin doing on Monday?

(A pause.)

Stray: That's rather good.

The future itself doesn't attend planning meetings.

Only the present does.

Blottisham: Then why not call them present plans?

Quillibrace: Because no one would fund them.

(They laugh.)

Stray: The manuscript says something quite beautiful.

"Human beings cooperate remarkably well with events that have not yet occurred."

Blottisham: That's called optimism.

Quillibrace: No.

Optimism concerns outcomes.

This concerns coordination.

Children are educated for futures they will inhabit decades later.

Trees are planted.

Bridges are designed.

Libraries are founded.

None of these activities would make much sense if everyone insisted upon remaining in the present.

Blottisham: So civilisation depends upon imagination.

Quillibrace: Shared imagination.

One person's imagined future is eccentric.

Several million people's imagined future becomes infrastructure.

(A thoughtful silence.)

Stray: That's extraordinary.

Infrastructure is collective imagination that has acquired concrete.

Quillibrace: Miss Stray...

I suspect that sentence may survive the afternoon.

(They smile.)

Blottisham: But predictions are often wrong.

Quillibrace: Frequently.

Blottisham: Doesn't that undermine the whole enterprise?

Quillibrace: Not in the least.

A calendar may fail to predict the weather.

It nevertheless remains useful for arranging lunch.

Blottisham: That's infuriatingly reasonable.

Quillibrace: I have been practising.

Stray: The manuscript also says people rarely need accurate futures.

They need shared futures.

Blottisham: Surely accuracy matters.

Quillibrace: Immensely.

But coordination frequently arrives first.

A bridge cannot be built if every engineer is imagining a different bridge.

Stray: So the future is partly a meeting place.

Quillibrace: Precisely.

An imaginary location at which present actions agree to encounter one another.

(A silence.)

Blottisham: That's rather poetic.

Quillibrace: Entirely accidental.

(They continue reading.)

Blottisham: Here's an observation I don't understand.

"The future is administratively inhabited."

What on earth does that mean?

Quillibrace: Pension funds.

School curricula.

Building regulations.

Insurance.

Research grants.

Urban planning.

Every Tuesday afternoon.

Blottisham: Every Tuesday afternoon?

Quillibrace: A surprising proportion of civilisation consists of people quietly arranging tomorrow.

Stray: Long before tomorrow has agreed to cooperate.

Quillibrace: Indeed.

Tomorrow has always been rather independent-minded.

(A pause.)

Blottisham: Then perhaps hope is really an administrative activity.

(Quillibrace looks at him over his glasses.)

Quillibrace: My dear Blottisham...

that may be the most alarming sentence you have ever produced.

Blottisham: Is it wrong?

Quillibrace: Not entirely.

Which is considerably more worrying.

(The room falls quietly silent.)

Stray: I think the manuscript admires this.

It doesn't laugh at people for planning.

It laughs gently at the confidence with which each generation imagines its particular future to be the obvious one.

Quillibrace: Yes.

Every generation eventually discovers that the future has been making plans of its own.

(Another silence.)

Blottisham: It occurs to me...

perhaps civilisation is simply humanity's longest conversation with tomorrow.

(Quillibrace closes the manuscript.)

Quillibrace: If so...

it is one of the few conversations in which the final participant has never yet arrived.

The discussion concluded after an extended disagreement over whether the College's Five-Year Strategic Vision should be regarded as a forecast, an aspiration, or an unusually optimistic filing system.

The document was unanimously renewed for a further five years.

Pages

Friday, 19 June 2026

Thursday, 18 June 2026