Networks of Readiness: Inclination, Ability, and the Dynamics of Potential: 1 Readiness as Relational Potential

Series Preface: Networks of Readiness

What if the system network, long used to model linguistic choice, could also illuminate how potential is primed for action? Networks of Readiness explores this question, reframing nodes and pathways as loci of inclination and ability. Across five posts, the series shows how readiness shapes actualisation, how choice emerges dynamically, and how networks evolve across language, biology, social systems, and physics. By presenting the network as a relational framework for action, the series offers a unifying lens on how potential becomes actual, and how complex systems navigate the landscape of possibility.

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In our previous explorations, the system network was presented as a model of structured potential: a topology of possibilities whose actualisation is perspectival. This series extends that insight, reframing the network to capture not just potential, but readiness — the system’s propensity and capacity to actualise.

Readiness, in this sense, is a relational vector with two components:

1. Inclination – the system’s tendency or propensity toward a particular construal.

2. Ability – the system’s capacity or competence to realise that construal in the given context.

Together, inclination and ability determine which pathways through the network are practically accessible, not merely theoretically possible.

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1. Nodes as loci of readiness

Each node in the network is a locus not only of potential meaning, but of readiness: a configuration where the system is both prepared and able to actualise particular construals.

• A node with high inclination but low ability represents desire without capacity — potential is primed but cannot yet be realised.

• A node with high ability but low inclination represents latent competence — capacity exists, but the system is not currently oriented toward actualisation.

• Only where inclination and ability converge does a node become ripe for actualisation, producing an instance in the relational field.

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2. Pathways as dynamic affordances

Pathways between nodes indicate more than structural alternatives; they encode dynamic affordances, graded according to:

• How easily the system can traverse them (ability).

• How strongly the system is drawn toward them (inclination).

This transforms the network from a static map of possibilities into a dynamic landscape of readiness, where actualisation is a matter of alignment along the most coherent, accessible trajectory.

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3. Choice as alignment of readiness

Actualisation — what we previously called “choice” — is now explicitly the alignment of inclination and ability.

• A cut through the network occurs where the system is both willing and able to realise a construal.

• Paths that are theoretically open but lack readiness remain dormant.

• Paths that are highly ready are more likely to be actualised, creating a graded, probabilistic-like distribution of construal while remaining fully relational.

This view preserves the relational ontology: readiness is not an intrinsic property of nodes, but a perspectival attribute emerging from the network’s configuration and the system’s alignment with it.

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4. Implications for cross-domain modelling

• Language: Readiness explains why some constructions are habitual or preferred; others are possible but unused.

• Biology: Differentiation occurs where cellular or morphogenetic readiness aligns with developmental opportunity.

• Physics: Certain pathways in phase space may be “favoured” due to local stability or resonance — a form of dynamic readiness.

• Social systems: Norms, roles, and interactions are enacted where collective readiness aligns with opportunity and constraint.

Readiness thus provides a unifying lens: actualisation occurs where the system is both inclined and able, across domains.

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5. Conceptual payoff

By integrating inclination and ability, we:

• Add a dynamic, agent-oriented dimension to the system network.

• Reveal why some potential paths are realised and others are not, without invoking external selection or deterministic causation.

• Preserve the relational, perspectival ontology while modelling the graded, context-sensitive nature of actualisation.

In the next post, we will examine choice as alignment of readiness more closely, showing how the relational network becomes a map not merely of potential, but of actualisable potential in action.