Genealogies of Relational Ontologies in Philosophy: 7 Whitehead – Process and Event Ontology

Whitehead reconceives reality as a web of processes and events rather than enduring substances. In his process ontology, the fundamental units of being are actual occasions, each a relational event that integrates and responds to prior events while contributing to the ongoing constitution of the world.

Possibility is embedded in process: each actual occasion inherits the potentialities of the relational field it emerges from, while simultaneously shaping the horizon for subsequent occasions. Becoming, not being, is primary; relational interdependence structures the realisation of potential, making actuality inseparable from context, interaction, and history.

Whitehead’s framework synthesises and extends prior relational insights. Heraclitus’ flux, Spinoza’s interdependence, and Leibnizian monadic networks converge in a vision where relationality is processual, dynamic, and constitutive of both individual and collective actuality. Knowledge, agency, and creativity are grounded in the capacity to navigate and contribute to this ongoing web of relations.

By positioning events rather than substances as the locus of being, Whitehead provides a relational ontology that accommodates novelty, emergence, and temporal evolution. Possibility is neither static nor pre-determined; it is continuously actualised through relational processes, illustrating a mature articulation of relational principles that will inform subsequent existential and phenomenological thought.

Genealogies of Relational Ontologies in Philosophy: 6 Hegel – Dialectic and Historical Relation

Hegel develops relational ontology through the dialectical unfolding of history, wherein possibility and actuality co-evolve within a reflexive and temporal field. Being is not static; it is structured by relations that unfold logically, historically, and conceptually. Contradictions, tensions, and resolutions are not anomalies but the very mechanism through which potential is actualised and transcended.

Possibility is historically mediated. Each stage of development both enables and constrains subsequent forms of thought, social organisation, and symbolic expression. Individual and collective actuality emerges from the interplay of forces, concepts, and relations within the totality of the historical process. Knowledge is similarly relational: understanding requires grasping the interconnections, negations, and syntheses that constitute the evolution of thought itself.

Hegel’s dialectic synthesises the insights of earlier thinkers. Heraclitean flux, Platonic participation, Aristotelian teleology, Spinozan interdependence, and Leibnizian networks are integrated into a framework in which relational dynamics are temporal, reflexive, and cumulative. Possibility is neither abstract nor static; it is the outcome of processes that structure, transform, and actualise potential across history.

In foregrounding historical relation as constitutive of potential, Hegel positions relationality as both ontological and epistemological principle. Being, knowledge, and possibility are inseparable from the processes that produce them, establishing a lineage of thought in which the structure of relations defines the horizon of what can occur.

Genealogies of Relational Ontologies in Philosophy: 5 Leibniz – Monadic Networks

Leibniz advances relational ontology through the concept of monads: simple, indivisible entities whose potential and actuality are defined entirely through their relations within a pre-established harmony. Each monad mirrors the universe from its own perspective, producing a networked field in which relational correspondences determine the scope of possibility.

Possibility is perspectival. Every monad contains a unique representation of all relations, and its actualisation unfolds according to the internal logic of that relational map. Individuality does not imply isolation; the structure of the monadic network ensures coherence across the whole. Relationality, rather than substance or location, governs both constraint and affordance.

Leibniz’s networked perspective extends Spinoza’s interdependence by emphasising multiplicity and perspectivality. Potentiality is distributed: the actualisation of one monad resonates throughout the network, illustrating how relational structure shapes what can occur across space, time, and cognition.

By articulating relational fields as the locus of potential, Leibniz formalises a lineage in which individuality and relationality co-constitute possibility. The monadic cosmos demonstrates that even discrete entities are intelligible only in the context of their systemic and perspectival relations, reinforcing the centrality of relational construal in the genealogy of ontological thought.

Genealogies of Relational Ontologies in Philosophy: 4 Spinoza – Conatus and Interdependence

Spinoza reconceives relationality as an ontological principle, embedding possibility within the dynamics of interdependence. For Spinoza, every being strives to persist and actualise its essence through conatus, a self-affirming activity that is inseparable from the relational field in which it exists. No entity exists in isolation; each is a node within an infinite network of interrelated modes of the one substance, God or Nature.

Possibility is thus co-determined: the potential of any individual is defined by its relations to others, and the actualisation of its capacities is contingent upon the broader, interconnected whole. Knowledge, ethics, and action all emerge from understanding these interdependencies, recognising that agency and effectivity are relational rather than atomistic.

Spinoza’s ontology extends and transforms the Aristotelian insight that potential is realised through participation in hierarchical structures. Here, however, the emphasis shifts from formal hierarchies to a monistic, interdependent web: every relational pattern constrains and enables what can occur, producing a dynamic, self-organising field of possibility.

By foregrounding interdependence as fundamental, Spinoza establishes a lineage of relational thought in which potentiality, actualisation, and ethical orientation are inseparable from the systemic web of being. Possibility is not merely a property of discrete entities; it is a feature of their mutual constitution within the relational cosmos.

Genealogies of Relational Ontologies in Philosophy: 3 Aristotle – Substance, Teleology, and Relational Hierarchies

Aristotle reframes relationality through a systematic ontology of substances, categories, and teleology. While Platonic Forms abstractly structure possibility, Aristotle situates potential within concrete entities, each defined by its nature, function, and place in a hierarchical order. Relations are intrinsic to the realisation of potential: substances actualise capacities according to their formal, material, efficient, and final causes.

Teleology is central. Possibility is not undirected but oriented toward ends defined by relational roles within a broader network of beings. Natural hierarchies organise potentialities: plants, animals, and humans actualise distinct modes of existence, yet each is intelligible only in the context of the whole. In this sense, relationality structures both ontological and epistemological horizons: understanding a thing requires apprehending its interconnections, functions, and purposes.

Aristotle’s framework preserves Heraclitean dynamism and Platonic structure while grounding them in actualised processes. Potentiality is relationally situated, actualisation emerges through participation in structured hierarchies, and the conditions of possibility are intelligible through the systemic interplay of causes and roles.

This relational hierarchy establishes a lineage for subsequent philosophical developments. By integrating substance, function, and relational embedding, Aristotle articulates a model of possibility as both constrained and enabled by networks of interdependent beings—a move that will resonate through later metaphysical systems seeking to understand being as fundamentally relational and processual.

Genealogies of Relational Ontologies in Philosophy: 2 Plato’s Relations – Forms, Participation, and Structure

Plato extends relational thinking through the abstraction of Forms and the dynamics of participation. For Plato, the world of experience is intelligible only insofar as it participates in structured, eternal patterns. Relations between particulars and Forms constitute the field in which possibility is both constrained and enabled.

Possibility is thus codified: the Forms delineate what can exist, while individual instances actualise potential through participation. Relationality is ontologically central—substances are intelligible only in reference to the structures they instantiate. Knowledge, too, is a relational achievement, attained through the apprehension of correspondences and harmonies among Forms.

This approach reframes construal: the world is no longer a mere flux of events, but a network of participatory relations that organise potential. The philosophical move from Heraclitean flux to Platonic structure illustrates a key shift in relational ontology: possibility is increasingly formalised, abstracted, and systematised, yet remains fundamentally a matter of relation rather than intrinsic substance.

Plato’s relational ordering lays the groundwork for subsequent ontologies. By positioning participation as the link between the abstract and the actual, he inaugurates a lineage in which relationality governs the conditions of possibility itself. The Forms are not passive templates; they are active constraints and affordances through which the potentiality of being is realised.

Genealogies of Relational Ontologies in Philosophy: 1 Heraclitus and Flux – Becoming as Relation

Heraclitus inaugurates a philosophical lineage that foregrounds relationality as the ground of being. For him, reality is not a collection of static substances but an ongoing process: everything flows (panta rhei), and becoming is the primary mode through which potential is actualised. Stability is an abstraction; relations between changing elements constitute the true fabric of existence.

In this framework, possibility is inseparable from the relational field in which it manifests. Opposites are not merely juxtaposed; they define and actualise one another. Fire, as the archetypal element, embodies transformation and the continuous interplay of forces, illustrating how being emerges through tension, correspondence, and interdependence.

Heraclitus’ thought reframes construal itself. To understand the world is to apprehend the network of relations that condition what can occur. Knowledge is perspectival and dynamic, grasped through attunement to the patterns and flows that generate potential. Becoming, in this sense, is not a property of things but a relational process that structures the horizon of possibility.

This early articulation of relational potential establishes the core insight for the genealogy of relational ontologies: that being, knowledge, and possibility are always co-constituted within the flux of interdependent relations. Heraclitus’ vision of the world as dynamic, relational, and processual sets the stage for subsequent philosophical explorations of how potential and actualisation are structured through relation rather than substance.

Genealogies of Imagined Worlds: 12 Collective Synthesis

The series Genealogies of Imagined Worlds traces the unfolding of human symbolic imagination from its primordial myths to the reflexive digital cosmos. Across eleven stages, we observe a progressive expansion and refinement of how possibility is construed, enacted, and reconfigured: from narrative as the first symbolic structuring of potential, through heroic, sacred, dramatic, allegorical, and literary systems, into the pluralised and perspectival realms of Modernism, speculative science fiction, and virtual worlds.

At each stage, imagination functions relationally: it is neither fixed nor isolated, but co-constitutive of human perception, ethical frameworks, and collective action. Myths and epics establish foundational horizons of moral and cosmic possibility. Scriptural and theatrical forms mediate communal values and relational understanding. Allegory and the early novel individuate symbolic potential, allowing interior experience and layered interpretation to reshape the scope of what can be imagined. Romantic and Symbolist works amplify alternative symbolic orders, while Modernist fragmentation exposes the contingent, perspectival nature of construal itself. Science fiction and digital simulations extend imagination into deliberately constructed worlds, where relational rules and technological frameworks modulate possibility in novel ways.

Throughout this genealogy, reflexive imagination emerges as both method and meta-construal. Symbolic worlds do not merely mirror reality; they instantiate, test, and expand it. The co-evolution of symbolic forms and human construal demonstrates that possibility is both historically situated and relationally produced. Each imaginative system builds upon, contests, or reconfigures its predecessors, generating cumulative expansions of potential across temporal and conceptual horizons.

In sum, the Genealogies of Imagined Worlds series illustrates that imagination is not merely a capacity for representation, but an active, relational process of world-making. By mapping how symbolic orders have shaped, and been shaped by, human construal, the series provides a disciplined view of the historical and conceptual conditions that enable possibility itself—a genealogy not of facts alone, but of the horizons within which the conceivable continually becomes actual.

Genealogies of Imagined Worlds: 11 Reflexive Imagination – The Co-Evolution of Symbolic Worlds

The genealogy of imagined worlds reaches a meta-construal in reflexive imagination. Across myth, epic, scripture, theatre, allegory, the novel, Romantic and Symbolist art, Modernist fragmentation, science fiction, and digital simulation, we observe a continuous interplay: symbolic worlds shape human perception and action, while human construal actively reconfigures symbolic fields. Possibility is co-evolving, never static, and always relational.

Reflexive imagination recognises that the creation, interpretation, and inhabitation of symbolic worlds are mutually constitutive processes. Narrative, metaphor, and virtual systems do not merely represent potential—they instantiate it, test it, and extend it. Each imaginative act alters the horizon of what can be conceived, experienced, or enacted in subsequent acts.

This meta-construal foregrounds relationality: symbolic worlds do not exist in isolation, nor are they merely reflective. They are fields in which collective and individual construals interpenetrate, feedback, and reshape one another. The epic hero, the allegorical journey, the interior consciousness of the novel, the speculative universe, and the digital cosmos each exemplify modalities through which imagination co-actualises potential and constrains it simultaneously.

Ultimately, reflexive imagination highlights the co-evolution of symbolic worlds and human possibility. Horizons of potential are both discovered and constructed, constrained and amplified by the interplay of conception, enactment, and reception. The genealogy of imagined worlds is thus not a linear history but a relational map of how humans have continually expanded, tested, and re-cut the very conditions of possibility.

In inhabiting this relational, perspectival field, imagination becomes not merely a faculty but a method: a disciplined, reflexive engagement with the symbolic structures that both limit and enable what can be thought, felt, or enacted. Through this lens, the history of imaginative worlds is inseparable from the history of possibility itself.

Genealogies of Imagined Worlds: 10 Simulation and Virtuality – The Digital Cosmos

The digital age introduces a radical transformation in symbolic construal: imagined worlds are no longer confined to text, image, or performance but instantiated interactively in virtual environments. Simulation and virtuality extend the epistemic and imaginative capacities of the collective, allowing possibilities to be explored, manipulated, and co-experienced in real time.

Digital cosmoses—ranging from immersive video games to virtual realities and algorithmically generated simulations—render the act of construal itself reflexive. Possibility is no longer merely proposed; it can be navigated, tested, and modified by participants. These worlds operate as relational fields: agency, structure, and feedback loops co-define what can occur, while the symbolic frameworks of earlier imaginative systems are recast as dynamic, interactive, and malleable.

Virtuality also reconfigures temporality and scale. Histories, futures, and alternative presents coexist within the same simulated space, allowing relational potentialities to unfold non-linearly. Ethical dilemmas, social structures, and ecological contingencies can be explored as situated experiments, revealing both constraints and emergent possibilities within a designed cosmos.

In short, the digital cosmos exemplifies the co-evolution of symbolic worlds and human construal. Possibility is no longer a matter of interpretation alone but of interactive, participatory negotiation. These new worlds do not simply mirror reality; they shape the very horizon of what can be imagined, experienced, and actualised. Simulation and virtuality thus extend the genealogy of imagined worlds into a reflexive, relational, and technologically mediated field of possibility.

Genealogies of Imagined Worlds: 9 Science Fiction Universes – Speculative Fields

Science fiction inaugurates a new phase in the genealogy of imagined worlds by extending symbolic construal into the technologically and conceptually speculative. Unlike earlier imaginative systems, which were anchored in myth, ritual, or aesthetic tradition, science fiction constructs entire universes governed by alternative logics, physical laws, and relational dynamics.

Speculative worlds function as laboratories of possibility. Authors such as Asimov, Le Guin, and Dick design societies, technologies, and ecologies that probe the limits of human and collective potential. The symbolic field is deliberately modular: social orders, ethical dilemmas, and cosmological structures can be rearranged, tested, and recombined, producing new insights into the conditions under which possibility may unfold.

Science fiction also foregrounds reflexivity in construal. By exploring technologically mediated or radically altered realities, these narratives make visible the assumptions and constraints of our own symbolic orders. Potential is no longer abstract or allegorical; it is contingent upon systems, rules, and relational networks — imagined worlds as mirrors and experiments for the actual world.

In this way, speculative fields expand the horizon of symbolic imagination. Possibility becomes a field to explore, manipulate, and inhabit. The reader, the writer, and the imagined universe co-constitute the symbolic space: each act of imagination both draws upon and transforms the network of constraints, opportunities, and conceptual affordances.

Science fiction exemplifies the transition from representation to generative construal: worlds are not simply described, they are enacted as relational fields of possibility, extending the collective capacity to imagine, negotiate, and inhabit futures otherwise.

Genealogies of Imagined Worlds: 8 Modernist Fragmentation – Multiplicity and Perspective

Modernism intensifies the turn toward pluralised symbolic worlds by fragmenting both narrative and perception. Where Romantic and Symbolist imaginaries expanded the symbolic horizon, Modernist literature confronts the contingency, multiplicity, and instability of that horizon itself. Possibility is no longer simply expanded; it is decoupled from fixed orders, exposing the relational and perspectival nature of construal.

Works such as Joyce’s Ulysses, Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, and Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway dissolve linear narrative, juxtapose multiple points of view, and render interiority as a field of overlapping temporalities and relational tensions. The symbolic world is no longer coherent in the traditional sense but emerges through the interplay of fragments, impressions, and shifts in consciousness.

This fragmentation foregrounds the perspectival character of possibility: what is real, what is meaningful, what is possible, varies according to the position, perception, and interpretive act of the observer. Symbolic fields are no longer universal but localised, contingent, and historically mediated. The narrative becomes a medium for exploring how individual and collective construals intersect, conflict, and co-evolve.

Modernist fragmentation also reconfigures the reader’s role. Interpretation is no longer passive; readers navigate relational webs of meaning, negotiating possibilities within an intentionally destabilised symbolic cosmos. The horizon of potentiality is participatory, reflexive, and inherently plural.

In short, Modernism articulates the contingency of symbolic construal itself, making visible the multiplicity of worlds embedded in perception, memory, and narrative. It is a decisive step toward understanding imagination as a field of relationally co-constituted possibilities rather than a mirror of a given reality.

Genealogies of Imagined Worlds: 7 Romantic and Symbolist Imaginaries – Art and Literature as Alternative Construals of Potential

The Romantic and Symbolist movements reconfigured imagination by shifting symbolic construal toward the ineffable, the sublime, and the alternative. If the novel foregrounded individual interiority, Romanticism radicalised this gesture, insisting that imagination itself was a force of world-making, capable of unveiling dimensions of possibility inaccessible to rational order or inherited tradition.

Romantic poetry and art staged possibility as excess — nature as boundless, feeling as infinite, spirit as uncontainable. The horizon of construal was no longer the collective cosmos or the individuated life alone, but the transformative power of imagination itself. To imagine was to actualise a symbolic field beyond the given: the visionary, the dreamlike, the untamed.

By the late nineteenth century, Symbolism pushed this tendency further, constructing elaborate aesthetic systems where art no longer represented the world but generated autonomous worlds of its own. In Mallarmé’s poetry, in Redon’s lithographs, in Wagner’s music dramas, possibility was conjured as pure symbolic resonance — layered correspondences without fixed referent, immersive environments of meaning and suggestion.

Together, Romantic and Symbolist imaginaries inaugurated a new mode of construal: the symbolic as alternative, as a deliberate expansion of the field of possibility beyond social order, moral code, or empirical fact. They offered not maps of reality but openings into otherness — portals to what might be, to what could be felt, seen, or intuited at the limits of experience.

This was imagination unbound: not explanation, not narrative coherence, but an ongoing invitation to dwell in the potentiality of worlds otherwise.

Genealogies of Imagined Worlds: 6 The Novel and Individual Worlds: Early Modern Construals

With the emergence of the novel in the early modern period, symbolic imagination shifted from collective allegorical machines to the intimate landscapes of individual experience. The novel does not encode worlds within prescribed correspondences; it opens possibility through the construal of singular lives, perspectives, and subjectivities.

Early works such as Cervantes’ Don Quixote dismantle older symbolic orders while inventing a new form: the individual as a world unto themselves. Characters are no longer types in a cosmic or moral drama, but figures whose decisions, delusions, and desires generate new horizons of possibility. The ordinary and the everyday acquire symbolic weight, as construal begins to turn inward—toward psychology, interiority, and personal perspective.

In Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe or Richardson’s Pamela, possibility unfolds not through allegorical correspondence but through the detailed narration of survival, virtue, and moral struggle. Here, construal is perspectival: the lens of a particular narrator or protagonist frames what counts as real, significant, and possible. The novel thus becomes a medium for exploring how symbolic orders are mediated through individual construal.

This turn toward the individual expands the symbolic cosmos: the multiplicity of personal perspectives gives rise to a plurality of worlds. The interior becomes a new frontier of imagination, where symbolic potential is structured by memory, desire, and self-reflection.

The novel’s invention marks a crucial transformation: the collective symbolic orders of myth, scripture, and allegory give way to individuated construals that actualise new possibilities of thought, feeling, and action. Each character, each narrator, each story generates a world. In the novel, possibility itself begins to pluralise in the key of the personal.

Genealogies of Imagined Worlds: 5 Allegory and Metaphor: Medieval and Renaissance Narrative Machines

If theatre staged possibility in the immediacy of performance, the allegories of the medieval and Renaissance imagination layered possibility into symbolic systems designed for interpretation. Allegory does not simply tell a story; it encodes one world within another, building narrative machines that multiply potential meanings.

Medieval allegories such as Everyman or Dante’s Divine Comedy structure reality as a field of correspondences. Earthly acts mirror cosmic orders, and journeys through forests or cities unfold as metaphors for the soul’s path. Here, construal is recursive: narrative becomes a symbolic map of possibility where each figure and episode opens into another layer of significance. Allegory multiplies potential through a system of relations, constraining interpretation within a symbolic order yet enabling endless elaboration.

The Renaissance intensifies this dynamic by bringing allegory into dialogue with humanism and emergent modernity. Spenser’s Faerie Queene weaves together chivalric adventure, moral instruction, and national myth. Metaphor becomes a tool of invention, allowing poets and playwrights to reconstrue politics, virtue, and desire within richly layered symbolic fields. Shakespeare’s plays, though not strictly allegorical, harness metaphor to create characters and worlds that resonate across registers—personal, social, and cosmic.

These allegorical systems function as engines of symbolic imagination: narrative machines that stage and multiply possibility through structured doubling, correspondence, and layering. They both discipline interpretation—constraining horizons through theological, ethical, or political codes—and unleash proliferations of meaning beyond the author’s intent.

In allegory and metaphor, symbolic construal reveals itself not as static reflection but as dynamic invention: a way of building worlds within worlds, shaping how possibility itself can be construed, navigated, and transformed.

Genealogies of Imagined Worlds: 4 Dramatic Construal: Theatre and Public Imagination

With the rise of theatre, symbolic construal takes on a distinctly public form. Unlike the sacred fixity of scripture, theatre stages possibility as spectacle—performed before and with the collective. Here the imagination is not bound by canon but animated through dramatisation: action, dialogue, and embodiment in time.

Theatre opens a unique symbolic space where social orders and cosmic tensions can be rehearsed, critiqued, and reimagined. The chorus in Greek tragedy gives voice to communal perspective, mediating between the hero’s struggle and the audience’s collective recognition. Comedy exposes the absurdity of power and convention, playfully inverting hierarchies. In both, the symbolic field is enacted in a shared present, uniting performers and spectators in a temporary but potent horizon of possibility.

What distinguishes dramatic construal is its emphasis on immediacy and resonance. The script is not sufficient on its own; meaning arises through gesture, tone, and interaction. Performance actualises potential not as a fixed text but as an unfolding relational field. Each performance is singular, yet anchored in shared forms and expectations. In this way, theatre embodies the relational ontology of construal itself: possibility is staged, recognised, and reabsorbed into the collective imagination.

Theatre also extends symbolic imagination into civic life. Public performance can legitimate authority, dramatise justice, or destabilise the taken-for-granted. It is both a mirror and a laboratory of the social order, where possibility is tested against the gaze of the many.

In dramatic construal, the collective no longer encounters symbolic order only through text or mythic narrative but through living performance. Here the horizon of possibility is embodied, reflexive, and fleeting, yet enduring in its impact: an art of public imagination, continually shaping how societies see themselves and what they might yet become.

Genealogies of Imagined Worlds: 3 Scriptural Worlds: Codification, Authority, and the Binding of Collective Horizon

With scriptural traditions, symbolic construal shifts again: from narrative enactment to codified authority. Where myth oriented the cosmos and epic dramatised agency, scripture binds the collective horizon into a durable architecture of law, memory, and divine command.

Scripture is not merely a text but a form of symbolic binding. It fixes the flux of oral tradition into written permanence, authorising certain voices while constraining others. What emerges is a horizon of possibility that is not only imagined but regulated: ritualised, canonical, and transmittable across generations. The text becomes a repository of collective potential, simultaneously stabilising and delimiting the worlds that may be construed.

This codification reconfigures the relation between individual and collective. The hero’s singular trial gives way to the believer’s disciplined participation. Authority is not performed through deeds but mediated through interpretation, commentary, and ritual adherence. The scriptural world actualises a collective order by binding imagination to the authority of the text.

Yet scripture does not merely constrain. By consolidating symbolic fields into enduring structures, it opens vast new horizons of relation: trans-local communities knit by common recitation; interpretive traditions that proliferate within the framework of a canon; the possibility of scale that transcends tribal or civic boundaries. The binding of possibility enables its amplification.

Thus scriptural worlds mark the consolidation of symbolic imagination into institutional form. The cosmos is no longer only narrated or enacted but inscribed—anchored in authority and transmitted through the reflexive interplay of text, ritual, and community. Here, the horizon of possibility is not abandoned but bound, becoming the foundation for new, expansive construals of the human and the divine.

Genealogies of Imagined Worlds: 2 The Rise of Epic: Heroic Worlds and the Expansion of Collective Possibility

If myth constitutes the cosmos as a horizon of possibility, the epic elaborates that horizon into a stage for human action. Where myth aligns the collective with the cosmic order, the epic dramatises the expansion of that alignment into history: heroic worlds, where individuals embody and test the scope of collective potential.

The epic is not simply a larger myth or a more elaborate story. It is a symbolic innovation: the emergence of figures who carry the collective beyond immediate ritual into projected futures and remembered pasts. The hero is not just a character but a construal of agency itself, a personification of how far the collective can extend its powers, its risks, its alignments. Through the trials and journeys of the hero, the collective encounters the possibility of its own transformation.

Epic narrative stages this expansion across multiple scales. Local struggles are folded into cosmic stakes; personal loyalty becomes indistinguishable from divine order; the death of a single warrior can shift the balance of the world. In this symbolic architecture, the collective does not simply inhabit the cosmos but tests its boundaries, discovers its limits, and imagines its renewal.

The rise of epic thus marks a deepening of symbolic reflexivity. The cosmos is no longer only given through myth but negotiated through narrative action. The hero embodies the relational cut between what is possible within the existing order and what might emerge through its reconfiguration. The epic makes visible the thresholds of possibility, dramatising the tension between tradition and transformation.

In this way, epic inaugurates the symbolic exploration of collective possibility. It is not simply the story of heroes but the collective’s experiment with its own horizons—projected, contested, and restructured through the figures who carry its fate.

Genealogies of Imagined Worlds: 1 Primordial Myths: The First Cosmologies – Narrative as the first symbolic structuring of possibility

Myth does not begin as ornament but as orientation. The earliest cosmologies are not descriptive accounts of what “was” but symbolic construals of what can be: relational horizons through which the collective first aligned itself with the possible.

What distinguishes primordial myth is not its factual status but its ontological role. These narratives do not operate as representations of a pre-given reality. Rather, they constitute a symbolic architecture that sets the parameters of relational alignment: a shared story of origin that simultaneously grounds and projects the world as a horizon of possibility. The cosmology is not a retrospective “explanation” but a prospective map, a construal of the relation between the collective and the cosmos that enables action, ritual, and coordination.

In this sense, the first cosmologies are also the first infrastructures of symbolic reflexivity. By narrating the origins of the world, they provide the collective with an account of its own possibility. The mythic horizon links collective continuity with cosmic order: life, death, fertility, harvest, warfare, kinship—all are scaled against a symbolic pattern that renders them not contingent but necessary within a larger relational alignment.

What emerges, then, is narrative as the first symbolic structuring of possibility. Myth constrains chaos not by explaining it but by phasing it into a form that can be inhabited. It stabilises horizons of action by embedding them in the cosmos itself. Here the symbolic is neither arbitrary nor secondary but constitutive: the cosmos exists, for the collective, only insofar as it is narratively cut, ordered, and actualised.

To trace the genealogies of imagined worlds, we must begin here: with myth as the primordial construal, in which story and cosmos coincide, and where the act of narration is indistinguishable from the constitution of world itself.

Genealogies of Scientific Construal: 10 Synthetic Science: 21st-Century Fields and the Reflexive Cosmos

Focus: Systems, networks, and co-evolving scientific fields.

Throughline: Possibility and construal are mutually generative; the act of theorising shapes the field of potential, and the relational field of possibility shapes theory.

In the 21st century, science has become explicitly reflexive: its methods, models, and frameworks are recognised as co-constitutive of the possibilities they describe. Fields such as systems biology, network science, and computational cosmology treat reality as a relationally structured and dynamic field, where entities, interactions, and constraints co-evolve. Possibility is no longer merely observed or predicted; it is actively shaped by the theoretical and experimental frameworks through which it is apprehended.

Emergent phenomena, adaptive networks, and synthetic systems illustrate that construal is participatory and relational. Observers, instruments, and models do not merely register potential; they instantiate and individuate it, creating new horizons for what can occur. Science itself becomes a meta-system of potentialities, reflecting the interplay between relational fields, feedback structures, and conceptual framing.

Modulatory voices:

• Barabási: network science and emergent relational structures.

• Noble: systems biology and multi-level constraints on potential.

• Wolfram: computational models demonstrating how simple rules generate complex, reflexive fields of possibility.

Synthetic science exemplifies a full realisation of relational ontology in practice. Theory and possibility are entwined: construal shapes potential, and potential shapes construal. Across scales — from atoms to ecosystems to cosmic networks — the 21st-century scientific project is a living field of co-individuating possibilities, where understanding, modelling, and acting are inseparable from the relational emergence of the possible itself.

Genealogies of Scientific Construal: 9 Complexity and Chaos: Nonlinear Worlds

Focus: Emergent systems, feedback loops, and the relational structuring of potential.

Throughline: Possibility is shaped by nonlinear interactions; outcomes arise from relational dynamics rather than deterministic law alone.

The late 20th century introduced a profound reconstrual of scientific possibility through complexity theory and chaos science. Systems—ecological, social, and physical—were recognised as nonlinear, relationally coupled, and sensitive to initial conditions. Potential is no longer strictly predictable, nor fully determined by overarching laws; it emerges through interactions, feedback loops, and relational constraints.

In these frameworks, small perturbations can generate disproportionately large outcomes, highlighting the contingency and generativity of relational fields. Emergent structures—patterns, attractors, and dynamic equilibria—illustrate that the possible is not reducible to simple deterministic laws, but arises from the networked relations within the system itself. Observation, modelling, and conceptual framing interact with the system, making construal an active, co-determining process.

Modulatory voices:

• Lorenz: sensitivity to initial conditions; chaos as a relational phenomenon.

• Prigogine: dissipative structures and emergent order.

• Holland: complex adaptive systems as fields of relational possibility.

Complexity and chaos highlight a crucial ontological shift: possibility is contingent, emergent, and relationally constrained. The horizon of potential is co-determined by the system’s internal dynamics and its external interactions, demonstrating that understanding, predicting, or guiding outcomes requires attention to relational patterns rather than isolated elements. Construal here is participatory, dynamic, and historically situated: the field of possibility itself is a living, evolving network.

Genealogies of Scientific Construal: 8 Quantum Constellations: Indeterminacy, Superposition, and Probabilistic Potential

Focus: The microcosm as a field of multiple, coexisting possibilities.

Throughline: Possibility is non-deterministic, relational, and probabilistic, revealing new modes of actualisation at the quantum scale.

The advent of quantum theory in the early 20th century radically transformed our construal of possibility. Unlike deterministic Newtonian mechanics or relativistic spacetime, quantum phenomena are intrinsically probabilistic: particles exist in superpositions, outcomes are indeterminate until measurement, and the relational structure of the system defines what can be actualised. Possibility is no longer a fixed or pre-determined field; it is fluid, relational, and contingent upon the act of observation and interaction.

Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle formalised the limits of what can be simultaneously known, while Schrödinger’s wavefunction illustrates the coexistence of multiple potential states. Bohr’s complementarity emphasised the relational dependence between observation and the phenomena observed. The construal of possibility now operates not only across space and time, but across probabilistic and relational states, making the act of measurement itself a constitutive element of reality.

Modulatory voices:

• Heisenberg: uncertainty as relational constraint on potential.

• Schrödinger: superposition highlighting coexistent possibilities.

• Bohr: complementarity showing relational dependency between observer and system.

Quantum mechanics reframes possibility as an emergent property of relational and contextual fields. The cosmos at this scale is not a predictable machine but a network of potentialities, where actualisation occurs only through interaction within defined relational structures. The very act of construal—measurement, observation, and theorisation—participates in the becoming of possibility.

Genealogies of Scientific Construal: 7 Relativity and the Expanding Field: Einstein and the Contingent Cosmos

Focus: Relational restructuring of space, time, and cosmic potential.

Throughline: Possibility is no longer absolute; it is contingent, frame-dependent, and dynamically relational.

The early 20th century introduced a profound reconstrual of the cosmos through Einstein’s theories of relativity. Newtonian absolutes—fixed space and universal time—were supplanted by a relational understanding of spacetime, where motion, duration, and simultaneity are frame-dependent. The potential for events and interactions is no longer universal; it is contingent upon relative positions, velocities, and gravitational contexts.

Einstein’s reconceptualisation extends the relational field of possibility beyond deterministic mechanics. Mass-energy curves spacetime, trajectories of objects are contextually mediated, and the cosmos itself becomes a dynamic, interdependent field. Construal is no longer purely formal or deterministic: understanding the cosmos requires awareness of the interplay between observer, system, and metric, situating potential within a flexible, relational horizon.

Modulatory voices:

• Minkowski: the formalisation of spacetime geometry as a relational field.

• Einstein: general and special relativity demonstrating contingent structure of potential.

In this reconstrual, possibility itself is reframed: outcomes are intelligible only within relational and contingent frameworks, emphasising co-dependence, context, and curvature. The cosmos is a field in which potential is enacted relationally, revealing that the very structures through which we understand events are historically, conceptually, and materially contingent.