Relational Ontogenesis — The Becoming of Worlds: 1 Potentials and Fields of Becoming

Worlds do not emerge fully formed; they arise from fields of potential, relational configurations in which possibilities are latent, awaiting actualisation. These fields are not empty space but structured potentials, differentiated by gradients, intensities, and predispositions that guide the emergence of coherent patterns. To inhabit an ontogenetic perspective is to see worlding itself as a process, an ongoing negotiation between what might be and what becomes.

A field is more than the sum of its parts. It is a relational scaffold, within which potential is distributed unevenly, producing tension, orientation, and readiness for actualisation. These uneven distributions mark gradients that shape how relational interactions unfold. Each local difference — a cut, a fold, a point of contrast — becomes a site where potential may condense into actuality, forming the nascent contours of a world.

The notion of potential is itself relational. It is not stored like a resource or intrinsic to an object; it is co-constituted across relations, appearing only in the interplay between positions, orientations, and possibilities. Potential is what a field can do, not what it is. In this sense, worlds are the actualisation of relational potential — patterns stabilised long enough to interact, differentiate, and feed back into the field that produced them.

Actualisation is therefore perspectival: every cut through a field selects a particular subset of possibilities while leaving others dormant. Each instantiation contributes back to the broader potential, reshaping the field for future actualisations. Worlds, then, are both the product and the modulator of fields of potential, emerging through an interplay of spatial structure, energetic tension, and relational differentiation.

By attending to potentials and fields, we apprehend the raw material of worlding: the pre-formed, relational canvas upon which intensity, flow, and circulation can act. Ontogenesis begins here, at the intersection of possibility and relation, where the becoming of worlds unfolds through patterned actualisation, differentiation, and feedback.