Throughout this series, we have traced a continuum from meaning to non-meaning, from local instance to system, and from individual cognition to collective alignment. The lantern metaphor has illuminated a central insight: meaning exists only as the phased actualisation of potential, and non-meaning is the generative horizon that makes this possible.
1. The architecture of the relational cosmos
Our updated ontology can be summarised as a three-layered relational field:
| Layer | Role | Dynamics |
|---|---|---|
| System | Structured potential | Topology of semiotic affordances guiding what can be actualised |
| Instance | Actualised meaning | Lantern-like phases that temporarily stabilise patterns in the field |
| Non-meaning | Latent relational potential | The horizon of affordances, generative and recursively shaped by each instance |
Each act of construal navigates this field: it illuminates, modifies, and creates new horizons of potential, making ontogenesis continuous, participatory, and multi-scalar.
2. Phased relationality
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Temporal phasing: Past, present, and future potentials co-define each act of meaning.
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Spatial phasing: Individual and collective lanterns co-align, stabilising phenomena across fields of perception.
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Ontogenetic phasing: Each instance reshapes non-meaning, generating the conditions for subsequent actualisations.
In this way, the relational cosmos is dynamic, layered, and reflexive: meaning and non-meaning are co-constitutive, system and instance continuously co-evolve, and cognition and social formations emerge as intertwined processes.
3. Implications
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Reality is participatory: There is no external, pre-given world of meaning — only relational phasing.
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Non-meaning is generative: What is unactualised is not absent; it is fertile, shaping future phenomena.
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Language and culture extend illumination: Distributed lanterns align perception and create collective horizons of possibility.
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Innovation arises from shadow: Novelty emerges at the edges of current construals, in the latent folds of non-meaning.
4. The final insight
Every act of meaning is simultaneously an event, a modulation of potential, and a redefinition of horizons. The lantern illuminates the dark, yet each illumination deepens the darkness in a new way, producing a cosmos in which reality itself is continuously phased, co-constituted, and relationally emergent.
In this relational cosmos, the distinction between meaning and non-meaning, between system and instance, is not a division but a dance of co-emergence. Each act of construal participates in the becoming of possibility, and the horizon of potential remains infinite, ever ready for the next lantern to descend.
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