Potential and Tension: The Architecture of Coherence: 2 What Does the Structuring of Potential Make Possible?

In the previous post, we examined what makes the structuring of potential possible: relational embedding, differentiation of elements, and nested temporalities. Now we turn the perspective: once structured, what can potential actually do? What generative capacities, tensions, and emergent patterns does it enable?

Potential as Generative Landscape

Structured potential is not inert. It defines the contours of what a system can actualise, establishing a landscape of generativity. Crucially, it does this without fully determining outcomes: possibility is constrained, yet expansive.

• In language (SFL terms): The field, tenor, and mode of a situation create a structured potential for particular semantic configurations. For example, an academic lecture carries potential for exposition, argumentation, and narrative illustration, all constrained by the register and instantiated through lexicogrammar. Yet, each lecture can instantiate a different trajectory of meaning, exploiting the same underlying potential in unique ways.

• In social systems: Institutional rules and roles provide potential for negotiation, coalition, and innovation. A parliamentary debate, for instance, has structured potential defined by rules of procedure, speaker roles, and cultural norms—but the debate’s trajectory is never fully predetermined.

Structured potential, therefore, orients instantiation without fixing it. It creates the arena in which tension can arise, for possibilities often collide, overlap, or conflict.

Structured Potential and the Emergence of Coherence

One of the most important effects of structured potential is its role in enabling coherence across scales:

• Micro-scale: Individual acts or statements can align with local constraints, producing coherent instantiations.

• Meso-scale: Sequences of interaction, such as dialogue or collaborative work, navigate potential across episodes.

• Macro-scale: Genres, institutions, or cultural formations guide patterned instantiations over long durations.

Structured potential enables coherence precisely because it provides a framework of constraints and affordances: it allows instantiations to be recognisably aligned with system patterns, even amid novelty.

Tension as a By-Product of Potential

Where there is structured potential, there is the possibility of tension. Not all potentialities are mutually compatible:

• In language, choices in mood, thematic structure, or modality may conflict with genre expectations or the tenor of an interaction.

• In social systems, institutional roles or resources may generate competing possibilities for action.

These tensions are not errors; they are intrinsic to generativity. The potential landscape is not flat—it is structured, multi-dimensional, and sometimes contradictory. Resolution of tension, which we will explore in later posts, is what allows systems to actualise their potential coherently.

Potential and Recursive Generativity

Structured potential is also recursive: instantiations feed back into the system, creating new constraints and new possibilities. In SFL, each utterance is a semantic event that actualises potential, and simultaneously contributes to the evolving register and lexicogrammar available for future meaning-making. Social, biological, and symbolic systems operate similarly: each instantiation modulates future potential, producing a dynamic, evolving generative landscape.

Implications

Structured potential is not merely a passive horizon of what might happen. It actively:

1. Orients instantiation across scales.

2. Enables coherence by providing patterned constraints.

3. Generates tension, which creates the conditions for adaptation, transformation, and higher-order alignment.

4. Recursively shapes future potential, feeding forward into subsequent possibilities.

In short, structured potential makes possible the very dynamism of systems—their capacity to sustain coherence, navigate tension, and generate novel configurations.

The next posts will examine tension and its resolution: the conditions that make the resolution of tension possible, and the generative consequences of successful resolution. Together, these posts will complete the mirror image of potential: conditions ↔ effects, possibility ↔ actualisation, tension ↔ coherence.