The Grammar of Readiness: Ontological Implications of Potential as Inclined Ability: 1 The De-Abstraction of Potential

To incline is to mean; to mean is to become.

In the history of metaphysics, potential has often been treated as a background condition — a vast, abstract field of unrealised possibilities. It sits behind the actual, waiting to be activated or drawn upon. But in the relational ontology developed here, that framing dissolves. Potential is not an inert reservoir. It is the dynamic orientation of reality itself — a readiness that inclines.

To treat potential as readiness is to re-locate ontology from substance to modality. A system, as Halliday suggested, is always already system-and-process: a theory of the instance, dynamically disposed toward realisation. Readiness is that dispositional aspect — not a state but a leaning, an orientation toward articulation.

In this light, potential cannot be separated from the processes that actualise it. It is not that potential precedes actuality, but that actuality is the local articulation of readiness. The system does not sit behind the instance; it inflects through the instance, and the instance in turn re-theorises the system. Every event is thus an act of ontological grammar — the cosmos conjugating its own readiness.

This shift has a profound consequence: potential becomes non-abstract. It is not something that exists apart from or prior to the world. Rather, it is the world’s own modal coherence — its way of leaning into itself.

When we abstract potential from inclination, we create the illusion of a passive background awaiting activation. But when we restore inclination to its rightful place, potential becomes living grammar — the readiness of meaning itself to become.

In this view, the universe does not unfold from nothing. It inclines.

And every act of becoming is the inflection of that readiness in context.