If metabolism is the rhythm of relation, morphogenesis is its patterning. Every living system, whether biological, social, or semiotic, maintains itself through continual transformation. But transformation alone does not suffice: what endures is the coherence of change—the ability of a field to sustain recognizable forms while everything within it is in motion.
To understand meaning as a morphogenetic process is to see structure not as a fixed architecture, but as a temporarily stabilised pattern of reciprocal individuation. The system’s form is not designed from above; it emerges from the rhythmic interplay of potential and instance, continuously renewed through the metabolic circulation of construal.
1. From Metabolism to Morphogenesis
In biological systems, morphogenesis refers to the process by which living forms take shape — the orchestration of differentiation within a field of growth. The same principle holds in the ecosocial domain. The patterns we call language, genre, or register are morphogenetic outcomes of meaning metabolism: the sedimented rhythms of recurrent construals.
Each act of meaning leaves a trace, a slight reconfiguration of the relational field. Over time, these traces accumulate into attractors — patterns that guide further individuation. The field thus develops its own morphogenetic tendencies: pathways of probable construal, tendencies of systemic potential.
In Hallidayan terms, the “system” is precisely such a morphogenetic stabilisation — a network of probabilities formed through recurrent instantiation. What appears as structure is, ontologically, stabilised flux.
2. The Field as Structured Potential
A morphogenetic field is a field of potential form, not an arrangement of fixed entities. It contains no shapes waiting to be realised, only tendencies to differentiate in particular ways when actualised. Each instance draws upon and modulates this field, slightly altering its topology for future acts of construal.
In relational ontology, we can say that form is the memory of metabolism — a residue of past individuation that biases the conditions of future individuation. The field is the collective body of those residues: a living archive of differential tendencies.
Lemke’s ecosocial model captures this beautifully. Meaning, for Lemke, is distributed across systems that remember through repetition. Practices, institutions, and discourses stabilise certain metabolic rhythms. The field of meaning potential is thus not abstract but historical: a morphogenetic field sustained by the iterative alignment of countless individuations.
3. Construal as Morphogenetic Operation
Every construal is a morphogenetic act — a local crystallisation of relational flow. In construing, we draw a cut that individuates potential; yet the act of cutting reshapes the field itself, influencing how future cuts may be drawn.
This recursive adjustment gives the field its developmental quality. Like an organism growing through continuous differentiation, the ecosocial field evolves through self-modifying construal. Each moment of meaning becomes a formative event in the larger morphogenesis of collective potential.
To construe, then, is to participate in the form-generation of reality — the ongoing articulation of what the world can be.
4. Individuation Across Scales
Morphogenesis operates fractally. The same pattern of reciprocal individuation recurs at every scale:
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Within an utterance, where meaning unfolds through logogenesis — the morphogenesis of a text.
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Within a community, where shared construals form genres, practices, and norms — the morphogenesis of culture.
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Within the planetary field, where symbolic life itself reorganises the patterns of matter and perception — the morphogenesis of the symbolic cosmos.
Across all scales, the logic is the same: form arises through the metabolic rhythm of reciprocal individuation. The field persists by continually regenerating its own patterns of differentiation.
5. Stability Through Reflexive Renewal
In this view, stability is not the opposite of change; it is the continuity of transformation. The system remains coherent because its processes of individuation are reflexively aligned. Each instance resonates with the field’s morphogenetic memory while extending it into new configurations.
This is what makes language a living system: its capacity to stay recognisable while constantly re-individuating itself. Every act of meaning renews the form of the system — not by repetition, but by rhythmic variation within a shared field of possibility.
6. The Form of Reflexivity
Ultimately, the morphogenetic field is not a structure of meaning, but a structure for reflexivity — a configuration that enables the system to perceive and reconfigure itself. Form is reflexive potential: the world’s way of stabilising the conditions under which it can continue to become.
Meaning, in this sense, is the morphogenesis of intelligibility itself — the universe articulating its own capacity for relation.
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