Genealogies of Scientific Construal: 10 Synthetic Science: 21st-Century Fields and the Reflexive Cosmos

Focus: Systems, networks, and co-evolving scientific fields.

Throughline: Possibility and construal are mutually generative; the act of theorising shapes the field of potential, and the relational field of possibility shapes theory.

In the 21st century, science has become explicitly reflexive: its methods, models, and frameworks are recognised as co-constitutive of the possibilities they describe. Fields such as systems biology, network science, and computational cosmology treat reality as a relationally structured and dynamic field, where entities, interactions, and constraints co-evolve. Possibility is no longer merely observed or predicted; it is actively shaped by the theoretical and experimental frameworks through which it is apprehended.

Emergent phenomena, adaptive networks, and synthetic systems illustrate that construal is participatory and relational. Observers, instruments, and models do not merely register potential; they instantiate and individuate it, creating new horizons for what can occur. Science itself becomes a meta-system of potentialities, reflecting the interplay between relational fields, feedback structures, and conceptual framing.

Modulatory voices:

• Barabási: network science and emergent relational structures.

• Noble: systems biology and multi-level constraints on potential.

• Wolfram: computational models demonstrating how simple rules generate complex, reflexive fields of possibility.

Synthetic science exemplifies a full realisation of relational ontology in practice. Theory and possibility are entwined: construal shapes potential, and potential shapes construal. Across scales — from atoms to ecosystems to cosmic networks — the 21st-century scientific project is a living field of co-individuating possibilities, where understanding, modelling, and acting are inseparable from the relational emergence of the possible itself.