Toward Responsiveness — From Inclination to Offer: 18 The Evolution of Meaning — Semiotic Potential Across Time

1. Meaning as the Recursion of Potential

Meaning evolves as the recursion of potential across time: each act of construal draws upon structured readiness, actualises it in context, and thereby reshapes the very field of potential from which future construals will arise. Meaning is not a fixed code but an evolving ecology of inclined abilities — continuously restructuring its own conditions of possibility through use.

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2. From Usage to System: Temporal Reflexivity in Meaning

Halliday’s cline of instantiation provides the formal expression of this recursive process.

• Instance: the moment of construal, where potential becomes actual.

• Potential: the structured readiness for construal, shaped by the accumulated history of prior instances.

• System: the emergent architecture of potential — an evolving theory of possible meaning relations.

Each construal both draws upon and transforms the system, creating a loop of temporal reflexivity: meaning evolves as the ongoing self-reorganisation of its own readiness.

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3. The Gradient of Innovation

Over time, variation accumulates. Some variations dissolve; others stabilize into new systemic configurations. The evolution of meaning thus follows a gradient of innovation shaped by the differential inclination of the semiotic field:

• Highly inclined potentials (those well-aligned with existing abilities) actualise easily, reinforcing system coherence.

• Weakly inclined potentials (those misaligned or novel) require reconfiguration of ability, introducing new semiotic possibilities.

Meaning change, therefore, is not random but relational: it unfolds along gradients of readiness modulated by the system’s evolving topology.

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4. Ability as the Domain-Specific Vehicle of Change

Because ability is context-sensitive, semiotic evolution proceeds differently across domains.

Scientific, artistic, political, and everyday registers each develop distinctive configurations of ability — unique ways of actualising potential. Over historical time, these differential abilities scaffold new semiotic architectures, extending the range of what can be meant.

The expansion of symbolic possibility is thus a consequence of increasing differentiation and coordination among abilities within the total semiotic ecology.

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5. Temporal Coherence and Cultural Continuity

Despite continuous variation, semiotic systems maintain temporal coherence.

This continuity arises not from stasis but from the recursive alignment of readiness across generations of construal. Culture persists as the shared retention of semiotic inclination — a collective readiness that orients meaning-making toward intelligibility.

When this alignment destabilises, historical discontinuity appears: old abilities lose traction, and new topologies of meaning emerge.

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6. Cosmosemiotic Resonance

The evolution of meaning mirrors the evolution of the cosmos itself: both are recursive processes in which actuality refines potential. The semiotic universe is the cosmos becoming aware of its own readiness — its own ability to construe itself. Each act of meaning is thus an instance of cosmological recursion: the world inclining toward knowing itself through symbolic differentiation.

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7. Toward the Conclusion

We have now traced how readiness unfolds across space (topology) and time (temporality), and how meaning evolves as the recursive alignment of inclination and ability within this dynamic field.

In the concluding post, we will draw these strands together under the heading:

The Coherence of Becoming — Possibility as the Architecture of Reality.