Throughline: Observation and systematic record-keeping begin the structuring of possibility, situating potential within relational and symbolic frameworks.
Long before formalised scientific theory, human construal of the heavens operated through symbolic, ritual, and observational systems. In Mesopotamia, Babylonian astronomers recorded celestial motions with remarkable precision, yet these observations were bound to divinatory and calendrical frameworks. Possibility was both circumscribed and articulated: the heavens could be described, predicted, and interpreted, but always within culturally and ritually determined constraints. The potentialities of observation were embedded in a network of signs, meanings, and relational patterns linking sky, society, and time.
By the time of early Greek natural philosophy, these observational practices were reframed through a new lens: reasoned, relational, and abstracted. Figures such as Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes began to translate empirical observation into explanatory principles, positing patterns and elements as generative of cosmic behavior. Possibility became more explicitly structured: what could be known was governed not merely by perception but by relational principles intelligible to reason. The cut between phenomena and principle — between event and law — began to emerge.
Modulatory voices:
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Babylonian astronomers: meticulous observation and predictive tables, emphasizing relational regularity without abstract theory.
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Thales and Anaximander: abstraction from observation to principle, showing the first systematic recuts of cosmic potential.
In this shift, we see the first deliberate alignment of construal with a proto-ontological frame: potential becomes intelligible not just as what occurs, but as what can be conceptually structured, anticipated, and relationally integrated. Observation itself is no longer passive; it participates in the reconfiguration of possibility.
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