Potential, Probability, and the Relational Turn: Series Conclusion — The Becoming of Possibility

Over the course of this series, we have traced a path from conceptual confusion to ontological clarity, exploring the nature, dynamics, and evolution of potential.

At the heart of the journey lies a fundamental distinction:

• Probability belongs to the epistemic stratum: it quantifies uncertainty about what will be actualised.

• Readiness belongs to the ontic stratum: it is the intrinsic field of capacities and inclinations that define what can become actual.

Relational ontology allows us to see the world not as a landscape of chance, but as a living, evolving field of potential, continuously actualised, recursively modified, and coherently aligned across scales.

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1. From local cuts to systemic evolution

Each actualisation — from quantum events to human action — is a perspectival cut: a local alignment of readiness.

These cuts are not isolated; they feed back into the relational field, modifying inclinations and capacities and shaping future possibilities.

Through recursion, coherence, and evolutionary dynamics, potential evolves naturally, producing emergent order, novelty, and adaptive alignment.

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2. Multi-scale implications

The relational turn applies across domains:

• Physics: wavefunctions, superpositions, and entanglement are fields of readiness; probability is epistemic.

• Biology: evolution, plasticity, and systemic adaptation emerge from recursive modulation of capacities and inclinations.

• Symbolic systems: language, culture, and technology participate in shaping fields of readiness across human and social scales.

All instances — whether physical, biological, or symbolic — are expressions of evolving potential, actualising in relational coherence.

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3. The conceptual payoff

This series achieves several conceptual gains:

1. Restores ontological clarity: potential is real, structured, and relational, not reducible to probabilistic abstraction.

2. Clarifies the role of probability: it measures epistemic uncertainty, leaving the ontic field intact.

3. Unifies dynamics across scales: recursion, coherence, and evolution provide a single framework for understanding quantum, biological, and symbolic phenomena.

4. Illuminates agency: human action and symbolic intervention are local actualisations within broader fields of readiness, capable of shaping future potential.

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4. The horizon of relational possibility

Reality, in this view, is not a static tableau but a continuous becoming of possibility.

Potential is kinetic, relational, and recursive. Coherence and alignment emerge naturally. Novelty and evolution are built into the dynamics of readiness itself.

Relational ontology does not merely describe reality; it makes intelligible the continuous unfolding of possibility, giving us a conceptual framework in which the dynamics of potential, probability, and actualisation are fully coherent.

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5. Closing reflection

To engage with relational ontology is to step into a world alive with potential:

• Every system is a network of capacities and inclinations.

• Every actualisation is a perspectival cut revealing coherent patterns of potential.

• Every recursive feedback shapes the unfolding field of possibility.

In embracing readiness as ontic and probability as epistemic, we gain a clearer, more generative picture of reality: not a world of chance, but a world of becoming — structured, relational, and perpetually open to possibility.