2 Life Reconstrued: 7 Evolution as the Evolution of Possibility

Series 2 has traced living systems from relational fields to organisms as horizons, from brain regimes of readiness to the semiotic threshold. We now arrive at the broader canvas: evolution.

Traditional accounts of evolution — framed as “progress,” “design,” or “information accumulation” — impose narrative metaphors that obscure the relational dynamics of life. Evolution is not the accumulation of encoded instructions or the linear advancement of intelligence. It is the unfolding of relational potential, the actualisation of possibility across scales of value-driven modulation.

From the perspective of relational ontology:

• Variation is not random data; it is the exploration of potential states within relational fields.

• Selection is not a judgment or goal; it is the modulation of which patterns of actualisation are viable under prevailing systemic constraints.

• Emergence is not “innovation” in a symbolic sense; it is the creation of new relational regimes, new horizons of potential, made possible by prior actualisations.

Evolution, then, is the evolution of possibility. It is the continuous negotiation of what can be, the shaping of relational landscapes, and the unfolding of potential in ways that sustain viability and enable new forms of coordination.

Viewed this way, the key insights of Series 2 converge:

• Life is value-driven, not meaning-driven.

• Organisms are fields of potential, co-creating their environments.

• Brains and nervous systems are regimes of readiness, modulating possibilities rather than encoding information.

• Semiotic meaning emerges only at thresholds of construal, built atop value dynamics, not generated by them.

• Evolution is the historical actualisation of these relational potentials, not a march toward a preordained goal.

This framework reframes both biology and cognition: it situates life as a dynamic, relational, multi-scale process, resisting the seduction of metaphorical shortcuts like computation, coding, or altruism. It allows us to see evolution, development, and cognition as the actualisation of possibilities, structured by the dynamics of value, and only intersecting with meaning where semiotic systems arise.

In short: life is the becoming of possibility, not the computation of information, not the transmission of codes, not the pursuit of moral or symbolic ends. By seeing evolution through this lens, we recover a view of life that is precise, relational, and conceptually disciplined, capable of sustaining the insights of both Series 1 and 2.

Series 2 closes here, leaving open the horizon for further exploration: how relational dynamics and semiotic thresholds intertwine to produce culture, language, and the human construction of meaning — the next frontiers of understanding possibility itself.