The Grammar of Readiness: Ontological Implications of Potential as Inclined Ability: 5 The Semioticisation of Physics

Probability is epistemic; readiness is ontic.

The refinement of potential as readiness offers a new lens on physics itself. Quantum mechanics, long entangled in debates over probability and uncertainty, can now be reframed in relational terms. Probabilities do not reside in the universe; they reside in our knowledge about the universe. Readiness, by contrast, is ontic: it is how reality inclines toward possible instantiations, independent of observation.

Quantum fields and virtual particles exemplify this distinction. The vacuum is not “empty” in the traditional sense; it is a lattice of readiness, a field of potential inclinations that may actualise as particles under suitable contextual conditions. The ephemeral appearance and disappearance of virtual particles is the local relief of tension within this field of readiness — not the unfolding of stochastic chance, but the modulation of ontic potential.

Implication: physicists’ focus on probability conflates epistemic uncertainty with the underlying ontic orientation of reality. By distinguishing readiness from probability, we restore clarity: the universe is inclined, not uncertain. Probability measures our lack of knowledge; readiness measures reality’s leaning into its own possibility.

Semiotic resonance:

We can describe this using systemic-functional insight. Readiness is like a universal semiotic system; probability is the observer’s construal of meaning within that system. Contexts — experimental arrangements, boundary conditions — modulate the actualisation of readiness, just as field, tenor, and mode modulate language realisations. Physics, in this reading, becomes a semiotic science: it traces how the cosmos enacts its own potential through relationally constrained patterns.

In short, the semiotic turn in physics is not metaphorical. Reality’s very being is grammar of leaning: a relational syntax of readiness articulated through contexts that actualise abilities. Observers encounter probability, but the universe moves by inclination.