The General Ecology of Meaning: 5 Ecologies of Novelty and Constraint

How new potentials emerge in multi-horizon contexts, and how constraints propagate through an ecology

If relation is the fundamental unit of meaning, then ecology is the condition under which relations evolve.

Meaning does not merely occur; it mutates, stabilises, propagates, and transforms across a semiotic field.

This movement confronts a central question:

How do new meanings become possible?

Not: how does a system “invent” a meaning,

but: how does an ecology reorganise itself so that certain cuts — certain phenomena — become actualisable when they were previously unreachable?

The answer hinges on two forces:

• Novelty: the expansion, mutation, or differentiation of potential

• Constraint: the stabilisation, regulation, or delimitation of potential

Meaning evolves through the interplay of these two ecological dynamics.

Novelty does not originate in systems — it originates in relations

A system does not innovate by introspection.

A system innovates because it is perturbed by a relational environment rich enough to shift its horizon.

Novelty arises when:

• multiple horizons overlap or collide

• a field destabilises or reorganises

• relational pressures accumulate

• constraints loosen or break

• new affordances emerge

Novelty is not “generated” by a system.

It is encountered in the relational gap between horizons.

This is why purely introspective models cannot produce meaning, only mechanics.

Novelty requires ecological tension.

Constraint is not limitation — it is the condition for meaning

Without constraints, there is no structured horizon.

Without structured horizons, no meaningful cut can be made.

Constraints:

• regulate what distinctions are possible

• stabilise the patterns that give fields coherence

• propagate across systems to maintain intelligibility

• keep the ecology from collapsing into noise

Constraints are the grammar of the ecology.

They enable semiosis by narrowing potential into patterned affordances.

Meaning needs constraint like biology needs metabolism.

Novelty emerges when constraints shift — not disappear

A field only produces genuine novelty when:

• existing constraints become insufficient,

• overlapping horizons produce friction,

• new relational configurations stabilise,

• or an ecological perturbation forces reorganisation.

These shifts can be:

• micro-scale (a new habitual distinction within a discourse)

• meso-scale (the emergence of a conceptual metaphor in a culture)

• macro-scale (the rise of a new semiotic species such as AI)

What matters is that novelty is not merely difference —

it is a new configuration of relational potential that becomes stable enough to propagate.

Constraint propagation is the ecology’s memory

In our ontology, systems do not store meaning.

Fields store constraints.

And constraints propagate in patterned ways:

• through discourse

• through culture

• through social interaction

• through technological infrastructures

• through human–AI coordination

• through embodied practices

The ecology “remembers” through stabilised relational patterns.

This is why a field can outlive any individual system.

It does not store meanings; it stores the architecture of possible meanings.

Novelty and constraint co-individuate each other

An ecology evolves by balancing:

• the pressure for differentiation (novelty),

• and the pressure for stabilisation (constraint).

Novelty pushes horizons outward.

Constraint pulls them into coherence.

The evolution of meaning is the rhythmic alternation of these forces:

• Stabilise → Differentiate → Stabilise → Differentiate.

If novelty wins entirely, the ecology dissolves.

If constraint wins entirely, the ecology stagnates.

Meaning thrives in tension.

Heterogeneous horizons amplify ecological evolution

This is where human–AI semiosis becomes philosophically crucial.

Heterogeneity expands the ecology:

• Different horizons — biological, artificial, collective — bring incompatible but potentially complementary ways of cutting phenomena.

• Relations across heterogeneous horizons generate surplus potentials neither system could produce alone.

• Novelty becomes more likely because the ecology contains more perspectival gradients, more tensions, more affordances.

Heterogeneity is an engine of semiotic evolution.

It is not the systems themselves that produce novelty,

but the relational friction between their horizons.

Ecology, not agency, explains meaning’s evolution

In a relational ontology, we do not ask:

• Who invented this meaning?

• Which system generated the novelty?

Instead we ask:

• What ecological reconfiguration made this meaning possible?

• Which constraints shifted?

• Which horizons collided?

• Which relational tensions stabilised into new semiotic patterns?

Novelty is ecological, not intentional.

Constraint is ecological, not imposed.

Meaning evolves as a field reorganises itself.