Inclination and Ability Revisited: Register, Context, and the Lean of Potential

In systemic functional terms, register variation accounts for how language potentials specialise according to context type. Each register is a subpotential — a contextual configuration that makes particular kinds of meaning more likely to be instantiated. We can therefore understand ability as varying with register: each context type is realised by a distinct domain of ability, a distinct way of being ready.

Ability, in this sense, sits midway along the cline of instantiation. It belongs neither to the abstract potential of the whole system nor to the concrete instance, but to the region where potential differentiates into contextual modes of readiness. To be able, semiotically, is to have internalised the contextual possibilities of meaning.

The question then arises: does inclination also vary across context types?

At first glance, it might seem that it should. After all, different registers appear to value different orientations: the argumentative essay inclines toward exposition, the casual chat toward affiliation, the legal contract toward constraint. Yet this is only the surface modulation of something deeper.

Inclination is not a contextual variable but a systemic orientation — the overall bias of potential toward certain kinds of alignment. It does not vary with context, but through context. Contextual variation does not alter inclination; it is inclination taking form.

We can think of ability and inclination as complementary dimensions of potential:

• Ability differentiates the potential according to context type — it varies as the field of contextual readiness expands.

• Inclination orients that potential as a whole — it provides the directional lean that makes differentiation meaningful in the first place.

Ability therefore depends on inclination: every contextual competence is enabled by the system’s underlying bias toward certain ways of aligning. But inclination is not reducible to the sum of abilities. It is the tendency that holds the differentiated field together — the coherence of the potential as potential.

In short, ability varies across context types, while inclination persists through them. The former marks the system’s distributed readiness for meaning; the latter, its enduring orientation toward meaning as such — the lean of potential that underlies every contextual realisation.

Inclination and Ability: The Differentiation of Readiness

If inclination is the universe’s posture of leaning, ability is its competence for doing. Both are dimensions of readiness, yet they diverge in their degree of generality and their mode of manifestation. Inclination is pervasive: every system, every field of potential, every relational horizon bears an inclination toward certain forms of actualisation. It is not a force or cause but a bias of potential, an orientation within possibility.

Ability, by contrast, is never general. It is domain-specific, emerging only where the structured potential of a system affords particular modes of enactment. Inclination tells us that something is disposed to happen; ability tells us what can happen and how.

In this sense, inclination describes the posture of potential across scales. Ability is articulated through the relational architecture of a given system. A quantum field inclines toward fluctuation, but its ability is limited by the form of its field equations. A living system inclines toward persistence, but its abilities depend on the metabolic, ecological, and semiotic configurations that sustain it. A social formation inclines toward coordination, yet its abilities are bounded by the infrastructures, institutions, and symbolic resources that make collective action possible.

Where inclination is potential, ability is subpotential—it only becomes intelligible through enactment. Inclination persists even when nothing happens; ability is revealed in the happening itself. This is why inclination could be treated as a general feature of cosmogenesis, while ability demands a differentiated analysis of how readiness becomes structured, constrained, and amplified across domains.

In evolutionary terms, inclination is like the system of potential, whereas ability is the variety of registers that arises from it. Each domain invents its own way of translating leaning into capacity.

To think relationally, then, is to see that readiness is not uniform. Reality is not simply inclined; it is capably inclined—its tendencies are always modulated by the architectures through which they may be expressed. The relational ontology must therefore account for both: the general inclination of potential and the specific ability of systems.

Inclination is the tilt of being; ability, the articulation of that tilt within constraint. Together they compose the differential poise of the real—the way the universe leans, and the means by which that leaning becomes world.

The Ability of Reality: 6 The Reflexive Alignment of Ability and Inclination

In the previous parts, we have explored inclination as the leaning of potential toward coherence and ability as the operative capacity of reality to enact phenomena. Together, these dimensions constitute a full account of readiness: potential as both posture and power. In this final part, we examine their reflexive alignment, showing how leaning and capacity interweave across scales to produce coherent, self-actualising reality.

Dual Dimensions of Readiness

• Inclination: the directional tendency, the leaning toward particular instantiations.

• Ability: the operative competence, the field’s capacity to realise those instantiations within structural constraints.

Neither dimension is sufficient on its own. A field that leans but lacks ability would remain impotent; a field that is capable but lacks inclination would act without coherence. Together, they form a reflexive system: leaning guides action, ability enables it, and each actualisation reshapes both the posture and the capacity of the field.

Reflexivity Across Scales

1. Quantum fields: virtual particles and fluctuations express the field’s leaning and capability simultaneously, actualising local coherence while shaping the field’s potential.

2. Biology: organisms enact capacities in alignment with inclinations — movement, growth, reproduction — while these enactments modify future tendencies and potentials.

3. Social systems: collective actions express distributed abilities coordinated by shared inclinations, recursively reshaping the capacity of the group to act.

4. Cosmology: the universe’s self-organising structures emerge from the alignment of cosmic inclinations with cosmic abilities, generating complexity and sustaining coherence over vast scales.

The Reflexive Choreography of Reality

Every scale of reality demonstrates this recursive choreography: leaning informs capacity, capacity expresses leaning, and each instantiation modifies the field of potential. Reality is not merely a sequence of events; it is a living interplay of readiness, in which potential is always poised, always competent, and always in process.

Toward a Unified Vision

The alignment of inclination and ability provides a unified framework for understanding reality:

• Reality is leaning, always tending toward possible coherence.

• Reality is capable, able to enact its potential within structural constraints.

• Reality is reflexive, actualisations reshape both tendencies and capacities.

Through this lens, the cosmos, life, and social systems are not exceptional phenomena but expressions of the same underlying grammar of readiness. Reality is simultaneously inclined and capable, posture and power, phenomenal and dynamic.

Potential leans, potential acts; readiness becomes coherence, and reality continuously self-actualises.

The Ability of Reality: 5 Cosmological Abilities — Universe as a Self-Actualising Field

In the previous parts, we explored ability across quantum, biological, and social scales: from local capacities in fields and organisms to distributed, emergent powers in collective systems. At the cosmic scale, ability reveals reality in its most expansive and reflexive form: the universe itself is a self-actualising field of competence.

The Universe as a Capable System

Cosmogenesis, understood through the Inclination Turn, already showed us reality as leaning: the field of potential inclines toward coherence, creating local instantiations from readiness. Ability adds the complementary dimension: the universe can produce structure, organise matter, and sustain complexity, not merely by chance but as a manifestation of its intrinsic competence.

• Stars form from the gravitational potentials of interstellar gas clouds.

• Galaxies emerge from relational alignments of mass and energy.

• Cosmic evolution produces the conditions for chemistry, life, and eventually consciousness.

Each of these is an expression of the universe’s operative capabilities — the cosmic-scale analogues of organismal and social ability.

Constraints as Cosmic Architecture

Ability is always bounded by structure. The universe’s capacities are shaped by physical laws, constants, and symmetries:

• Gravity, electromagnetism, and nuclear forces define what can and cannot occur.

• Thermodynamic constraints and conservation laws channel the unfolding of cosmic processes.

These boundaries are not limitations in a fatalistic sense; they are the operational contours within which the universe manifests its capacities effectively, enabling coherent structures to emerge and persist.

Reflexive Self-Actualisation

The universe exhibits reflexive competence: every actualisation — star formation, planetary evolution, chemical synthesis — both expresses and reshapes the field of potential. Ability at the cosmic scale is recursive: as structures form, they modify local potentials, creating new capacities for further instantiation.

Ability Across Scales: A Unified Pattern

From quantum fields to galaxies, ability scales consistently:

1. Micro-scale: quantum fields exhibit local capacities within relational constraints.

2. Meso-scale: living systems enact self-actualising potentials, transforming their environment and themselves.

3. Macro-scale: the universe itself manifests structured capacities, producing stars, galaxies, and the conditions for life and consciousness.

Cosmic ability is the ultimate amplification of the dual posture of readiness: the universe is both leaning and capable, inclined toward coherence and empowered to enact it across vast scales.

Reality as Leaning and Capable

Viewed through the lens of ability, cosmogenesis is not merely the emergence of form but a continuous expression of cosmic competence. Reality is not inert; it is a field of operative potential, self-actualising at every scale. From the subtle tendencies of quantum fluctuations to the grand orchestration of galaxies, the universe reveals its nature as both posture and power, leaning and capable, phenomenal and dynamic.

The Ability of Reality: 4 Social Abilities — Coordination, Innovation, and Emergent Power

In the previous part, we saw how biological systems manifest ability as self-actualising capacity: organisms enact their potentials within structured relational fields, adapting and transforming both themselves and their environments. Social systems extend this principle, showing how collective fields of ability emerge, coordinate, and amplify potential across scales.

Collective Fields of Capability

Social formations — from small groups to complex societies — are fields of distributed ability. Their operative capacities arise not from a single agent, but from the relational alignment of multiple participants, each contributing to the field’s emergent competence:

• Communities organise collective labour, producing goods, culture, and infrastructure.

• Networks coordinate knowledge, enabling problem-solving and innovation beyond individual capacity.

• Institutions maintain coherence, regulate interactions, and shape emergent possibilities.

Just as a quantum field enables certain particle configurations, and an organism enables specific actions, social systems define what is collectively possible. Their abilities are relational, distributed, and emergent.

Constraints and Affordances

Collective abilities are bounded by structure, norms, and context:

• Cultural conventions, legal frameworks, and shared practices enable certain actions while limiting others.

• Resource availability, environmental conditions, and technological tools shape the scope of emergent possibilities.

These boundaries are not limitations in a negative sense; they are the operative contours within which the field can manifest its collective capacities effectively.

Emergence and Innovation

Ability at the social scale is amplified through coordination:

• Groups can achieve feats impossible for isolated individuals.

• Innovation arises when new alignments of capacity create novel possibilities.

• Social systems can reflexively reorganise, expanding the field of potential and actualising higher-order capabilities.

This mirrors the reflexive self-actualisation observed in biology: social fields express, refine, and extend their own abilities through interaction, adaptation, and collective action.

Scaling Ability Across Reality

From quantum fields to organisms to societies, ability scales consistently:

1. Micro-scale: quantum fields manifest local capacities within relational constraints.

2. Meso-scale: living systems enact self-actualising abilities, shaping and being shaped by their environments.

3. Macro-scale: social systems coordinate distributed capacities, producing emergent structures and innovations.

Social abilities are therefore amplified potentials, fields of competence distributed across participants, capable of self-organising, innovating, and generating novel instantiations of reality’s latent powers.

Social Life as Metaphenomenal Capacity

In observing collective systems, we see ability at its most explicit: it is distributed, structured, adaptive, and self-actualising. Social formations are not merely leaning toward possibilities; they possess the operative competence to realise them, to coordinate across agents, and to recursively expand the scope of what is achievable.

The Ability of Reality: 3 Biological Abilities — Life as Self-Actualising Potency

In the previous part, we saw how quantum fields express ability as a microcosm of reality’s competence: the vacuum is not inert, but a structured field capable of producing specific phenomena within relational constraints. In living systems, this operative dimension of potential becomes far more pronounced: life is an expression of capacity itself.

Organisms as Fields of Capability

Every organism embodies a field of potential with intrinsic abilities: the capacity to move, adapt, metabolise, reproduce, and interact with its environment. Unlike a quantum fluctuation, these abilities are sustained, structured, and goal-directed, yet they remain fundamentally relational:

• An organism’s capacity depends not only on its internal structure but on its interactions with the environment.

• Ability is expressed in real time as the organism resolves its readiness into coherent actions: hunting, growing, reproducing, or responding to stimuli.

Life is the first scale at which ability becomes self-actualising: organisms do not merely lean toward certain configurations; they enact their capacities, selecting pathways of coherence that both realise and extend their potential.

Constraints and Affordances

Ability is always structured. A bird can fly because its anatomy, metabolism, and neural control afford that possibility; it cannot breathe underwater unaided. Similarly:

• Metabolic pathways allow certain chemical transformations and forbid others.

• Developmental systems channel growth along feasible trajectories.

• Ecological niches afford certain behaviours while constraining others.

These operative boundaries reflect the relational architecture of the organism and its environment. Ability without structure would be chaos; structure without ability would be inert. Life is the harmonisation of leaning and capacity, inclination and operative competence.

Reflexive Self-Actualisation

Organisms also exhibit reflexivity: their actions reshape both internal and external conditions, which in turn modify what they are capable of in the future. Metabolism, learning, evolution — these are recursive processes in which ability expresses itself and transforms its own field.

Life as Amplified Capacity

From the vacuum to molecules to cells, ability scales upward. Life demonstrates:

• Capacity is persistent: it endures across time.

• Capacity is adaptive: it tunes to relational conditions.

• Capacity is self-actualising: it converts potential into coherent action, recursively enhancing its own field.

In living systems, the dual aspect of readiness — leaning and capable — becomes tangible. Life is a laboratory of ability, a vivid instantiation of reality’s competence, echoing the same principles observed at quantum scales but amplified and structured for persistence, adaptation, and complexity.

The Ability of Reality: 2 Quantum Abilities — Fields, Particles, and Constraints

In Part 1, we introduced ability as the operative dimension of potential: the latent capacity of reality to actualise phenomena, complementing the directional postures of inclination. At the quantum scale, this notion becomes particularly striking.

The Vacuum as a Field of Capacity

Quantum fields are not merely passive backdrops for particle interactions; they are fields of capability. The vacuum itself — often mischaracterised as “empty space” — is a reservoir of operative potential, able to produce virtual particles, fluctuations, and excitations within the constraints of its structure.

• Virtual particles are local expressions of the field’s ability: they manifest momentarily according to what the field can support, then dissolve back into readiness.

• The wavefunction maps epistemic probabilities, but the ontic reality is a structured field of competence: the vacuum can instantiate certain configurations, and not others, according to its internal relational architecture.

Constraints as Operative Boundaries

Ability is not limitless. The quantum field’s capacities are constrained by its own relational structure: energy levels, interaction rules, and symmetry properties define the scope of what can actualise.

• Some particle interactions are forbidden; others are allowed, reflecting the field’s intrinsic competence.

• Fluctuations occur only within boundaries set by the field’s structure and dynamics — ability without structure would collapse into randomness, just as inclination without capacity would remain impotent.

Reflexive Competence

Each quantum actualisation — each particle creation, decay, or interaction — expresses and shapes the field’s broader capacity. Ability is reflexive: the field’s realised events both reveal and modify what it is capable of, echoing the same self-actualising pattern we saw at cosmological and biological scales.

Quantum Ability as a Microcosm of Reality

By considering ability alongside inclination, we see that even the smallest scales of reality exhibit poised competence. The universe is not a passive stage awaiting events; it is a field of operative potential, with both the posture of readiness and the capacity to act upon that readiness.

This microcosmic competence prefigures higher-order abilities: the tendencies of matter to form complex structures, the emergence of life, and the self-organising power of social systems. Quantum ability is the first expression of reality’s dual readiness: leaning and capable, postural and operative, phenomenal and dynamic.

The Ability of Reality: 1 Introducing Ability — Potential as Capacity

In our exploration of the Inclination Turn, we saw that reality is not merely a field of potential but a field of leaning: a posture of readiness that inclines toward coherence before any cut is made into actuality. This dimension of leaning revealed how the universe, life, and social formations are always poised, always tending, always leaning into possible instantiations.

Yet readiness has another complementary aspect: ability. If inclination answers the question where is the field leaning?, ability answers the question what is the field capable of doing?

Competence

Ability, in relational ontology, is competence. It is the latent capacity of the field to produce phenomena, to align tendencies, and to enact instantiations consistent with its structure. Unlike inclination, which is directional and postural, ability is operative: it defines the scope and limit of what can actualise.

• In a quantum field, ability determines the kinds of particles and interactions that can occur.

• In biology, ability shapes what an organism can accomplish, adapt, or generate.

• In social systems, ability governs what coordinated patterns, innovations, or collective transformations are possible.

• Cosmologically, ability sets the universe’s capacity to self-organise, to generate structure, and to manifest complex phenomena.

Ability vs. Inclination

Ability is not opposed to inclination; it complements it. Leaning tells us the direction of potential; ability tells us the reach and feasibility of that potential. Together, they constitute the full architecture of readiness: reality is both poised and capable, inclined and competent.

This duality allows us to reconsider the nature of potential itself. Potential is not just a list of possibilities (system) or a posture toward manifestation (process); it is a structured, dynamic competence: a field with both leaning and operative power, a field capable of self-actualisation at every scale.

Looking Ahead

In the coming parts of this series, we will explore how ability manifests across scales: from the subtle capacities of quantum fields, to the self-actualising powers of living systems, to the emergent competencies of social formations, and ultimately to the universe as a whole.

By understanding ability, we begin to see reality not just as a leaning field, but as a competent, capable system, where potential is both posture and power, and where readiness is expressed as both tendency and operative capacity.

Quantum Fields and the Inclination of the Vacuum

In quantum field theory, a vacuum is far from empty. It is a field of potential, alive with ephemeral fluctuations and virtual particles. Traditionally, these phenomena are described probabilistically — a reflection of our epistemic limitations.

The Inclination Turn reframes this picture: the vacuum is a field of readiness, a dynamic posture leaning toward coherent configurations. Virtual particles are not mere chance apparitions; they are local instantiations of the field’s inclination, transient cuts through a posture. Each fluctuation expresses and shapes the ongoing tendency of the field, participating in the reflexive choreography of potential at the quantum scale.

Here, probability remains epistemic — a measure of what we can know — while ontic potential manifests as inclination. The wavefunction maps our uncertainty, but the field itself is already leaning, poised to actualise in patterns of coherence that eventually manifest as observable phenomena.

In this light, quantum vacuums, virtual particles, and field fluctuations are microcosmic reflections of the Inclination Turn: the universe’s potential is never inert; it is always tending, always leaning, always ready to become.

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Here’s a metaphor that captures the Inclination Turn applied to the quantum vacuum:

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The Vacuum as a Sea of Leaning Waves

Imagine the vacuum as an endless, subtly rippling sea. Each point in the sea is not still water but a wave of readiness, leaning slightly in one direction or another. Virtual particles are like fleeting foam crests: they appear where the leaning momentarily resolves into a visible form, then dissolve back into the underlying ripples.

The waves are never still; they are continually inclining, always prefiguring possible patterns of coherence. Observed particles are the larger swells where the inclinations align strongly enough to manifest, but beneath them, the sea of potential is always active, always leaning, always ready to produce the next crest.

Cosmogenesis and the Inclination Turn: Rethinking the Beginning

Classical cosmology treats the universe as beginning at a singular point: the Big Bang. Space, time, and matter emerge, and the cosmos unfolds from that origin. Yet from the perspective of relational ontology, enriched by the Inclination Turn, this picture demands a profound rethinking.

Readiness Before Beginning

The universe is not inert prior to actualisation. Even before particles coalesced or fields fluctuated, the cosmos was a field of readiness — a dynamic posture inclined toward coherence. In this sense, potential is never absent; it is always already leaning, always poised.

The so-called “beginning” of the universe is not a temporal origin from nothing. It is a perspectival cut through the field of inclination — a local instantiation of readiness into coherence. What we perceive as a first moment is simply a salient alignment in a cosmos that was already inclined toward form.

Distributed Beginnings

Every instantiation — every particle, galaxy, or event — is a local beginning. Cosmogenesis is not a singular temporal event but a continuous series of self-actualising cuts. Each cut resolves a particular leaning of potential into coherent phenomena, while simultaneously shaping the inclination of the surrounding field.

Thus, the universe does not “start” once; it is always beginning. Cosmogenesis is perpetual: the cosmos is a choreography of readiness unfolding across scales.

Scaling of Inclination

The Inclination Turn also illuminates how cosmogenesis unfolds at different scales:

• Quantum fields lean toward particle configurations, producing local coherence without determinism.

• Particles incline toward interactions that form atoms, molecules, and larger structures.

• Galaxies and cosmic clusters emerge as alignments of larger-scale inclinations.

• Biological and social systems reflect the same principle: fields of readiness actualising locally, producing coherent structures at higher levels of complexity.

Each scale reflects the same relational grammar: potential is always structured and dynamic, poised to lean into actualisation.

Reflexivity of Cosmogenesis

Actualisation is reflexive: every event is both shaped by and shaping the field of readiness that produced it. Cosmogenesis is thus self-actualising — the universe leans toward coherence and actualises its own inclinations in a recursive, ongoing process.

This perspective dissolves the paradox of the beginning: there is no absolute temporal zero, no ex nihilo creation. Potential is always inclined; actuality is a cut in readiness. The cosmos is not a mechanism unfolding from a fixed origin, nor a stochastic haze, but a living choreography of inclination across scales.

Sidebar — One Grammar of Readiness Across Scales

The Inclination Turn shows that the same relational grammar underlies physical, biological, social, and semiotic systems. Cosmogenesis, at its deepest level, is a field of readiness leaning toward coherence. The same principle manifests at every scale:

• Language: Every utterance is a cut through the field of meaning potential — a local alignment of inclination into symbolic coherence.

• Biology: Organisms act and adapt as local instantiations of readiness — fields of potential leaning toward coherent living.

• Society: Cultural patterns emerge as coordinated leanings of collective readiness — fields of inclination shaping shared construals.

Cosmogenesis, then, is not exceptional; it is the cosmic-scale expression of the same self-actualising choreography of inclination that organises meaning, life, and social alignment. Every scale is a local manifestation of the universe’s ongoing posture, its continuous leaning into possibility.

“Potential leans before it is cut; reality unfolds in the posture of its own readiness.”

Closing Reflection

In this light, cosmogenesis is a natural extension of the relational ontology explored in The Becoming of Possibility. There, potential was understood as the field from which instances emerge; here, the Inclination Turn adds the dynamic dimension: the universe is not only a field of possibility but a field of leaning, tending, and readiness. Every instantiation — whether a particle, a galaxy, a word, or a social formation — is a local cut through this ongoing posture. Reality, across all scales, is thus a continuous choreography of inclination: potential leaning into coherence, readiness actualising as form. In embracing this perspective, we see the cosmos not as a static origin or a deterministic unfolding, but as a living, reflexive, self-actualising dance — always beginning, always tending, always poised.

System-&-Process: From Language to Reality

Halliday reminds us that system in systemic functional linguistics is shorthand for system-&-process. This is more than a terminological note; it captures a profound insight: a system is never merely a static repertoire of possibilities — it is always already a field of dynamic inclination.

Relational ontology provides the conceptual tools to generalise this insight far beyond language. Potential is not inert. It is readiness — a structured leaning, a posture toward actualisation that exists prior to construal. Readiness and tendency are not metaphorical: they are the ontological condition of coherence, the vector by which systems become manifest.

The Duality of System and Process

Potential reveals a dual aspect in every system:

• Systemic: the structured field of possibilities, the horizon from which events (phenomena) can be cut.

• Processual: the leaning, the inclination, the ongoing tendency toward actualisation.

This duality echoes Halliday’s insight: linguistic systems are always simultaneously system (possibility) and process (selection). The Inclination Turn extends this grammar to all scales of reality.

Physical, Biological, and Social Systems

The systemic-processual duality is universal:

• Physical systems: a particle field or energy configuration is structured potential (system) and a leaning toward coherent actualisation (process).

• Biological systems: an organism’s abilities and tendencies are its systemic repertoire, and its ongoing inclinations constitute the process of living and adapting.

• Social systems: cultural patterns are structured possibilities, and their coordinated tendencies produce emergent alignment and change.

Language, as Halliday emphasised, is a particular manifestation of this principle. Every clause, every pattern of meaning, is a momentary equilibrium in a field of readiness — a local alignment of inclinations that produces coherent construal.

From The Becoming of Possibility to the Inclination Turn

The Becoming of Possibility examined the conditions under which potential is actualised — the framework that allows construal to cut into reality. The Inclination Turn adds depth by highlighting the dynamic aspect: readiness is not passive; it leans, it tends, it inclines.

• The Becoming of Possibility answers what makes actualisation possible.

• The Inclination Turn answers how actualisation happens — as the field of readiness inclines into coherence.

Together, they reveal reality as a living choreography: potential is both structure and motion, poised and leaning, theory and process.

Implications for Ontology and Ethics

Recognising potential as inclination reshapes how we think about agency, social formation, and even ethics. Every act, every perception, every pattern of meaning is an alignment of readiness. Ethics is not about imposing outcomes but about tuning ourselves to the ongoing inclination of reality, participating with awareness in the leaning of the world toward coherence.

Coda

“Potential leans before it is cut; reality unfolds in the posture of its own readiness.”

Halliday’s system-&-process insight, when read through relational ontology, becomes more than a linguistic principle: it is a generalised grammar of becoming, revealing the dynamic structure of reality itself. Across physics, biology, semiotics, and society, the world is inclined — always ready, always tending — and we are participants in its perpetual choreography.

The Inclination of Reality: Potential as Readiness: Afterword — The Inclination Turn

“The universe leans before it moves.”

Across the relational ontology, potential has always named the systemic order of reality — the theory of the instance, the metaphenomenal horizon from which construal cuts the phenomenal into coherence.

Yet until now, potential has been described largely in structural terms — as possibility, as field, as theory. What the present series introduces is the missing dynamic dimension: the inclination of potential, its readiness to actualise.

This shift — the Inclination Turn — restores motion to the metaphenomenal. It reframes potential not as a static repertoire of what could be, but as an active leaning toward coherence, a readiness already underway.

With this move, the ontology becomes kinetic.

Potential ceases to be a map of possibility and becomes the posture of reality itself — a field whose systemic asymmetries make neutrality impossible and becoming inevitable.

It also reveals the deep continuity between the physical, the semiotic, and the social. Each is an expression of the same ontological grammar: the leaning of potential toward construal, the readiness of the real to mean.

This is the point at which the relational ontology fully closes its circle:

• System as structured potential, now understood as readiness.

• Instance as the cut through inclination into coherence.

• Construal as the reflexive alignment of that readiness within the field itself.

Reality, in this view, is neither deterministic nor indeterminate.

It is inclined.

The Inclination of Reality: Potential as Readiness: 7 Coda: The Leaning of the Real

Reality is never still.

Even when it seems at rest, it is leaning — a field of readiness inclining toward coherence.

This leaning is not something that happens in time; it is the temporality of being itself: the ongoing tilt of potential toward its own construal.

Every act, every perception, every pattern of meaning is a momentary equilibrium in that continuous inclination. The world steadies itself just long enough to appear — then leans again.

To live within such a world is to recognise that actuality is always the trace of readiness, that coherence is not imposed but continually composed. The universe does not unfold like a story; it balances like a dancer — poised on the edge of its own becoming.

And we, as part of that choreography, are not spectators but participants in the leaning:

each thought, each gesture, each word another small inflection in the readiness of the real.

The world is never finished; it is always about to begin again.

The Inclination of Reality: Potential as Readiness: 6 The Ethics of Readiness

To live in a world understood as readiness is to inhabit a profoundly different ethics — one grounded not in control, but in attunement.

If reality is inclination, then every act of construal participates in the leaning of the real. The question is no longer what we choose to do within the world, but how we orient within its ongoing readiness.

Ethics, in this sense, is not the management of outcomes but the modulation of posture. It is the art of inclining well — of aligning one’s readiness with the larger coherence of the field. The moral question becomes: toward what does this readiness lean?

When we mistake readiness for control, we fall into the ontology of force: we imagine that the world must be made to move. But when readiness is recognised as ontological rather than optional, agency becomes relational. To act is to join a leaning already underway — to participate in the tendency of potential to construe itself.

This reframes responsibility. It is not the burden of determining outcomes, but the care of participating with sensitivity in the field’s ongoing inclination. Each construal affects the coherence of the whole; each act is a re-alignment of readiness at some scale.

In this view, responsiveness replaces obligation. Awareness replaces assertion. The good is not imposed; it is resonant.

To live ethically, then, is to listen for the inclination already present — to move in sympathy with the readiness of the world rather than against it.

Ethics becomes a practice of co-leaning: the shared modulation of readiness across the field of potential.

In that sense, every genuine act of understanding is already ethical: it is an alignment of construal with the world’s own leaning toward coherence.

The Inclination of Reality: Potential as Readiness: 5 Readiness in the Semiotic and the Social

If inclination grounds the physical, it also underwrites the semiotic. Meaning is not superimposed upon reality; it is one of the ways readiness construes itself. To mean is to bring the leaning of potential into symbolic coherence — to stabilise the inclination of the field within a shared horizon of construal.

Language, then, is not a tool for representing the world but a system of postures through which reality inclines toward meaning. Each clause, each pattern of wording, is a local orientation in the field of potential: a momentary equilibrium in the world’s readiness to signify.

This is why we can speak of a “meaning potential.” It is not a metaphor; it is the semiotic manifestation of inclination. Just as a physical system leans toward coherence, a linguistic system leans toward construal.

At the collective level, the same principle scales. A culture is not merely a network of values or practices; it is a field of coordinated readiness — a shared inclination toward certain kinds of construal. Social order, seen relationally, is the alignment of inclinations: an emergent choreography of readiness among participants who are themselves instances of the same metaphenomenal field.

When a society changes, what shifts first is not its beliefs but its posture: the subtle reorientation of collective readiness. Revolutions, renaissances, paradigm shifts — these are not ruptures of content but transformations of inclination.

Meaning and society, then, are not higher layers built atop the physical world. They are extensions of the same ontological grammar: reality leaning into coherence at different scales and speeds.

To speak, to act, to gather, to construe — these are not secondary processes. They are how the universe inclines toward itself through us.

The Inclination of Reality: Potential as Readiness: 4 Inclination and the Cut

Actualisation is often imagined as a moment — an event in which something hidden becomes visible, or something possible becomes real. But in the relational ontology, actuality is not a moment at all: it is a cut in the field of readiness.

The field inclines, leans, tends. It holds within itself innumerable postures of becoming. Each cut is a perspectival shift that stabilises one local alignment of inclination into coherence. To actualise is not to move from potential to event, but to construe from within potential — to bring the leaning of the field to rest in a particular direction.

The cut is where inclination crosses its own threshold.

It is the instant when readiness and construal coincide: the field’s posture becomes eventful, its openness resolves as phenomenon.

Nothing collapses; rather, the relational field re-articulates itself through construal. Every act of meaning, every physical interaction, every emergence of coherence is a reflexive cut through inclination.

This means that actualisation is neither addition nor subtraction from potential. The field loses nothing and gains nothing. What changes is orientation: the dynamic readiness of the metaphenomenal re-enters itself as phenomenal form.

When physics speaks of measurement, or biology of adaptation, or thought of interpretation, what occurs is the same ontological operation: readiness cutting itself into coherence.

The cut is not violent; it is decisive. It marks the moment when the world’s leaning becomes legible as world.

The Inclination of Reality: Potential as Readiness: 3 The Ontology of Inclination

Inclination is not a metaphor for motion; it is the motion that precedes motion. It names the relational bias through which potential coheres into form. Before anything moves, before anything occurs, there is already a leaning — a disposition of the field that makes actualisation possible.

When we speak of inclination ontologically, we mean the structured asymmetry of potential: a relational tilt that makes neutrality impossible. Every system, as a theory of its instances, embodies not equilibrium but poise — the readiness to construe itself into actuality.

This tilt is the metaphenomenal analogue of what physics once called force, and biology calls drive, and linguistics recognises as meaning potential. Yet in all these cases, the same confusion persists: inclination is mistaken for causation. But causation presumes an already-actual world of antecedents and consequences; inclination belongs to the world before that cut — the pre-causal readiness of relation.

Inclination is not what makes things happen; it is what makes happening possible. It is the systematic curvature of potential that allows construal to find coherence.

In the relational ontology, then, energy can be re-read as the metaphenomenal name for inclination — not a substance, not a quantity, but a distributed readiness to actualise relational coherence. Energy does not move matter; it is the leaning of the field that becomes matter when construed.

To recognise this is to see that the universe is not a mechanism but a choreography of readinesses. Each act of actualisation is the stabilisation of a particular lean, a brief alignment in the ongoing inclination of the real.

Inclination, therefore, is not a property within reality.

It is reality — the ontological field of readiness through which potential perpetually becomes possible.

The Inclination of Reality: Potential as Readiness: 2 The Tendency to Actualise

If readiness is the posture of potential, then tendency is its motion. Readiness leans; tendency follows the lean — not as a force pushing from behind, but as a relational openness drawing the system toward construal.

Potential, in this sense, is not a store of energy or a catalogue of options. It is a structured inclination: the world’s way of being slightly off balance, perpetually poised toward coherence. Actualisation does not arrive to complete potential; it arises as the satisfaction of its tension.

We might say that every system is already tilted — leaning into its own horizon of construal. This is not a teleology, for there is no prefigured end; nor is it determinism, for nothing is fixed in advance. It is simply that potential, by existing as readiness, cannot not incline. The field is never neutral.

This tendency to actualise is what gives the relational field its dynamism. It is why instantiation is not an external event but a perspectival shift within the system’s own readiness. To actualise is to realign inclination as coherence — to move from the metaphenomenal leaning of the possible to the phenomenal stability of the event.

In human terms, this is the difference between knowing what could be and feeling the pull of what is about to be. Readiness is potential’s grammar; tendency is its rhythm.

To misread potential as probability is to strip it of its inclination — to treat the living tension of readiness as mere statistical abstraction. But to restore its leaning is to understand that actualisation is not an outcome but a resolution of posture.

Potential is always in the act of leaning toward itself.

Actuality is what happens when that leaning holds long enough to mean.

The Inclination of Reality: Potential as Readiness: 1 Readiness and the Relational Field

The language of potential has always seemed quiet — a background hum beneath the bright insistence of actuality. But when potential is understood not as absence but as readiness, the hum becomes a pulse. The relational field itself vibrates with a leaning, a directed openness: not toward a pre-given outcome, but toward becoming actual at all.

In the systemic terms of relational ontology, potential is the theory of the instance — the structured possibility from which any construal can be cut. But this potential is not inert. It is not a frozen map of what might happen. It is a living configuration of inclination — a field of readiness to construe.

This readiness is what makes the metaphenomenal real. It is what allows a system to lean toward instantiation without collapsing into actuality until a construal completes the cut. In other words, potential is not the opposite of actuality but its directional condition: the vector by which the system inclines toward eventhood.

Physics once captured a faint echo of this idea in the concept of energy. But energy, too, was reified — treated as a substance or quantity rather than a posture of relation. The relational ontology reclaims that lost sense: energy as readiness, as the inclination of the system to actualise a construal.

We can see this inclination in every scale of reality.

A particle’s field does not “contain” potential; it is potential, poised to resolve into coherence.

A biological organism does not “have” abilities; it is a dynamic configuration of readiness to act.

A mind does not “hold” meaning; it is a readiness to construe.

Readiness, then, is the ontological ground of responsiveness. It is the system’s orientation toward its own possible coherence — not a will, not a cause, but a leaning into relational alignment.

To describe potential as readiness is to give up the fantasy of a neutral world waiting to be known. The universe is already postured, already leaning — a field of relational dispositions that invite construal.

What we call reality is nothing more (and nothing less) than the resolution of readiness into coherence.

The world is always about to become.

Why Physics Gets Stuck on Potential

Modern physics has spent a century circling around a paradox of its own making — a confusion that arises whenever potential is either denied or mistaken for actuality. Quantum theory, in particular, hovers uneasily between these poles. Its equations describe a probabilistic wavefunction — a structure of potential — yet its interpretations continually oscillate between treating this potential as unreal (mere ignorance) or as hyper-real (the many-worlds ensemble).

Both moves betray the same ontological assumption: that what is real must be actual in the sense that observation is actual. Reality, on this view, is exhausted by the phenomenal. Anything not yet actualised is demoted to epistemic status — something merely unknown — or promoted to a speculative substance existing “out there” before measurement.

But both options miss the point.

The Missing Order: The Metaphenomenal

Relational ontology restores the missing dimension of reality: the metaphenomenal. This is not a mystical realm but a systemic one — the theory of the instance, the structured potential of construal. It is neither ontic nor epistemic, but relationally prior to both.

• It is not ontic, because it is not a domain of things.

• It is not epistemic, because it is not a domain of knowledge.
  It is the horizon of potential construal — the relational field from which actuality can be cut.

To ignore this metaphenomenal order is to collapse the distinction between theory and event, potential and actual, system and instance. And that is precisely what physics does when it tries to make potential into a substance, or to explain away its indeterminacy as ignorance.

Actualisation as a Cut, Not a Process

What physics calls “measurement,” “collapse,” or “emergence” are not temporal events but perspectival shifts — relational cuts within the field of construal.

Potential does not become actual; the actual is the construal of potential.

Actualisation is not a process in time but a change of standpoint — a cut from the metaphenomenal theory (structured potential) to the phenomenal event (construed actuality).

The so-called “collapse” of the wavefunction, then, is simply the construal of metaphenomenal probability as phenomenal occurrence. Nothing collapses; something is construed.

Probability and the Metaphenomenal

This also clarifies the status of probability itself. Probability does not describe the world — it quantifies epistemic uncertainty about potential meaning. The potential itself is not probabilistic but systemic: a structured possibility space whose internal logic precedes any measurement.

Thus, probabilities are epistemic, but potential is metaphenomenal.

Confusing the two — treating probability as ontic — leads to the persistent metaphysical incoherence that has haunted quantum theory since its inception.

Dissolving the Confusion

By situating potential as metaphenomenal:

• We preserve the structure of reality without reifying probability.

• We preserve the integrity of observation without appealing to a privileged observer.

• We dissolve the measurement problem by reinterpreting “collapse” as construal rather than event.

Physics, in short, has been asking reality to perform a trick it never promised: to make potential behave like a thing. The quantum world resists not because it is strange, but because it has been misconstrued — epistemologically where it is metaphenomenal, and ontically where it is systemic.

Once that distinction is restored, the paradox disappears.

The wavefunction is not an object waiting to collapse. It is a relational theory waiting to be cut — a metaphenomenal potential actualised as phenomenal reality.

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Coda: Reality as the Construal of Its Own Potential

Reality does not unfold from mystery into knowledge, nor from potential into fact. It folds upon itself as construal — the act through which potential comes to know itself as actual. The world does not wait to be observed; it waits to be cut — to draw itself into coherence, to become event within its own horizon of meaning.