The Becoming of Possibility: 11/10/25

Monday, 10 November 2025

Networks of Readiness: Inclination, Ability, and the Dynamics of Potential: 3 Topologies of Readiness Across Domains

In Post 2, we saw that choice is the alignment of readiness — the convergence of inclination and ability at a given node or pathway. In this post, we extend that insight to examine how readiness is distributed across different topologies, revealing the relational landscape in which actualisation occurs across multiple domains.

1. Linguistic topology: paradigms and habituality

In language, the network is paradigmatic: nodes represent alternative constructions, and pathways encode choices constrained by grammar, context, and convention.

Inclination reflects the speaker’s tendency to prefer certain constructions, shaped by habit, discourse goals, and social norms.
Ability represents competence in lexicogrammar.
High readiness nodes are frequently chosen constructions, forming stable patterns of meaning.
Low readiness nodes represent possible but infrequent alternatives, rarely actualised unless inclination or ability shifts (e.g., learning, stylistic choice).

The topology is thus graded and relational, not binary: potential exists everywhere, but readiness varies across the network.

2. Biological topology: morphogenetic landscapes

In biology, readiness maps naturally onto attractor-based networks:

Nodes represent stable cellular or phenotypic configurations.
Pathways represent developmental trajectories, constrained by genetic and epigenetic fields.
Inclination emerges from local chemical gradients or signalling biases.
Ability emerges from cellular machinery, energy availability, and environmental permissiveness.
Actualisation occurs where inclination and ability converge, producing differentiation; latent potential remains where alignment is absent.

The topology of readiness here is dynamic, continuously shifting as cells interact, signals propagate, and environmental conditions change.

3. Physical topology: phase space and resonance

Even in physics, the network metaphor applies:

Nodes represent regions of phase space (e.g., stable states or energy minima).
Pathways represent allowed transformations according to physical laws.
Readiness corresponds to local stability and accessibility: certain states are more likely to be actualised because the system is dynamically “primed” to move toward them.
Inclination is analogous to probability density in quantum or statistical mechanics; ability corresponds to the physical feasibility of transition.

The system “chooses” where to actualise in accordance with readiness vectors, without requiring observer intervention beyond the relational structure of the field.

4. Social topology: norms and collective action

Social systems exhibit networked potential shaped by norms, roles, and coordination constraints:

Nodes represent social configurations or events (e.g., decisions, rituals, collaborative actions).
Pathways encode interactions, dependencies, and sequences.
Inclination reflects motivation, preference, or cultural drive.
Ability reflects resources, coordination capacity, and institutional support.
Collective action arises where inclination and ability align across participants; otherwise, potential remains dormant.

Social readiness is multi-agent and distributed, creating a network in which some pathways are locally high in readiness but globally constrained.

5. Common principles across domains

Despite differences in topology, all domains exhibit the same relational logic of readiness:

Nodes carry graded potential: readiness varies continuously rather than existing as binary.
Pathways constrain and channel actualisation: only trajectories with sufficient alignment are accessible.
Dynamics shape the network over time: feedback loops, learning, and environmental change shift inclination and ability vectors.
Latent potential persists: unrealised nodes/pathways retain readiness that may become activated in the future.

This shows that readiness is a cross-domain property, making the system network a unified model of relational actualisation.

6. Conceptual payoff

Readiness introduces a vectorised, dynamic dimension to potential, showing why certain paths are more likely to be actualised.
It preserves the relational ontology: actualisation is perspectival and emergent from alignment, not imposed externally.
It provides a framework for predicting and explaining the distribution of actualisation across complex networks in language, life, matter, and society.

In the next post, we will explore how readiness evolves dynamically, introducing feedback, reinforcement, and inhibition as mechanisms that shape the flow of actualisation through the network. This will turn the system network into a truly dynamic, temporal model of potential in action.

Networks of Readiness: Inclination, Ability, and the Dynamics of Potential: 2 Choice as Alignment of Readiness

In Post 1, we reframed the system network as a map of readiness, integrating inclination (propensity) and ability (capacity) into each node and pathway. In this post, we examine choice not as a simple selection among alternatives, but as the actualisation of potential where readiness aligns.

1. Choice as perspectival actualisation

Where previously we described choice as a “cut” through the network of potential, readiness adds direction and constraint:

Inclination draws the system toward certain nodes and pathways.
Ability enables the system to traverse those pathways.
Choice occurs where both converge — where the system is both disposed and competent to actualise a construal.

In this view, not all pathways are equally likely; actualisation is probabilistic-like, but fully grounded in relational topology rather than random selection.

2. Linguistic example: habitual vs novel constructions

Consider a speaker selecting between two grammatical constructions:

Construction A: frequently used, highly practised → high readiness (high inclination + high ability).
Construction B: rarely used, unfamiliar → low readiness (low inclination and/or low ability).

The speaker’s choice will almost always fall on A. B remains possible, but without sufficient readiness, it is unlikely to be actualised.

Here, the network encodes both the potential for meaning and the system’s dynamic readiness to realise it, explaining habitual patterns without invoking external rules or constraints.

3. Biological example: developmental pathways

In morphogenesis, cells follow developmental trajectories constrained by genetic, epigenetic, and environmental conditions:

A morphogenetic basin (node) is ready if signals align (inclination) and cellular machinery is competent (ability).
Only when readiness aligns does differentiation occur.
Potential pathways that are theoretically open but lack alignment remain dormant, preserving latent potential.

This mirrors linguistic readiness: actualisation emerges where the system is primed and capable.

4. Social example: collective action

Consider a social system:

Norms and roles define a network of potential social events.
Collective readiness arises when inclination (desire, motivation) and ability (resources, coordination) align.
Only then do actions actualise: a protest forms, a policy is implemented, a ritual enacted.
Potential paths that lack alignment remain latent — explaining why some social possibilities never manifest.

Here again, choice is relational and perspectival, dependent on alignment of readiness rather than deterministic forces.

5. Dynamics of alignment

Choice as alignment introduces a dynamic view of the network:

Readiness can shift over time as inclination and ability change.
Feedback loops can increase or decrease readiness along certain pathways (practice, learning, resource accumulation).
The network thus becomes not just a map of potential, but a dynamic landscape where pathways are continuously primed, realised, or inhibited.

This makes the network a predictive and explanatory tool, able to model why certain potentials are actualised in context and why others remain dormant.

6. Conceptual payoff

By integrating readiness into the relational topology of the system network:

Choice is no longer abstract or static; it is emergent from system alignment.
Actualisation reflects both the topology of potential and the dynamic state of the system.
The model unifies language, biology, and social phenomena under the same relational principle: actualisation occurs where inclination and ability converge.

In the next post, we will explore topologies of readiness across domains, showing how inclination and ability are distributed through networks and how this shapes the dynamics of actualisation.

Networks of Readiness: Inclination, Ability, and the Dynamics of Potential: 1 Readiness as Relational Potential

Series Preface: Networks of Readiness

What if the system network, long used to model linguistic choice, could also illuminate how potential is primed for action? Networks of Readiness explores this question, reframing nodes and pathways as loci of inclination and ability. Across five posts, the series shows how readiness shapes actualisation, how choice emerges dynamically, and how networks evolve across language, biology, social systems, and physics. By presenting the network as a relational framework for action, the series offers a unifying lens on how potential becomes actual, and how complex systems navigate the landscape of possibility.

In our previous explorations, the system network was presented as a model of structured potential: a topology of possibilities whose actualisation is perspectival. This series extends that insight, reframing the network to capture not just potential, but readiness — the system’s propensity and capacity to actualise.

Readiness, in this sense, is a relational vector with two components:

Inclination – the system’s tendency or propensity toward a particular construal.
Ability – the system’s capacity or competence to realise that construal in the given context.

Together, inclination and ability determine which pathways through the network are practically accessible, not merely theoretically possible.

1. Nodes as loci of readiness

Each node in the network is a locus not only of potential meaning, but of readiness: a configuration where the system is both prepared and able to actualise particular construals.

A node with high inclination but low ability represents desire without capacity — potential is primed but cannot yet be realised.
A node with high ability but low inclination represents latent competence — capacity exists, but the system is not currently oriented toward actualisation.
Only where inclination and ability converge does a node become ripe for actualisation, producing an instance in the relational field.

2. Pathways as dynamic affordances

Pathways between nodes indicate more than structural alternatives; they encode dynamic affordances, graded according to:

How easily the system can traverse them (ability).
How strongly the system is drawn toward them (inclination).

This transforms the network from a static map of possibilities into a dynamic landscape of readiness, where actualisation is a matter of alignment along the most coherent, accessible trajectory.

3. Choice as alignment of readiness

Actualisation — what we previously called “choice” — is now explicitly the alignment of inclination and ability.

A cut through the network occurs where the system is both willing and able to realise a construal.
Paths that are theoretically open but lack readiness remain dormant.
Paths that are highly ready are more likely to be actualised, creating a graded, probabilistic-like distribution of construal while remaining fully relational.

This view preserves the relational ontology: readiness is not an intrinsic property of nodes, but a perspectival attribute emerging from the network’s configuration and the system’s alignment with it.

4. Implications for cross-domain modelling

Language: Readiness explains why some constructions are habitual or preferred; others are possible but unused.
Biology: Differentiation occurs where cellular or morphogenetic readiness aligns with developmental opportunity.
Physics: Certain pathways in phase space may be “favoured” due to local stability or resonance — a form of dynamic readiness.
Social systems: Norms, roles, and interactions are enacted where collective readiness aligns with opportunity and constraint.

Readiness thus provides a unifying lens: actualisation occurs where the system is both inclined and able, across domains.

5. Conceptual payoff

By integrating inclination and ability, we:

Add a dynamic, agent-oriented dimension to the system network.
Reveal why some potential paths are realised and others are not, without invoking external selection or deterministic causation.
Preserve the relational, perspectival ontology while modelling the graded, context-sensitive nature of actualisation.

In the next post, we will examine choice as alignment of readiness more closely, showing how the relational network becomes a map not merely of potential, but of actualisable potential in action.

Networks of Potential: Reimagining the System Network through Relational Ontology: Codicil: From Networks to the Architecture of Reality

The journey we have traced through the system network has revealed something unexpected: a linguistic tool, developed to model choice in grammar, can illuminate the architecture of potential itself. Across language, physics, and biology, we see the same relational logic at work — structured fields of potential differentiating perspectivally, actualising locally, and maintaining coherence across scales.

The series ends not with a definitive map of reality — that would be impossible — but with a lens: a way of seeing phenomena as phases of relational potential, rather than as isolated entities. The network, in this sense, is a prototype formalism: a bridge from semiotics to ontology, from language to life, from meaning to matter.

Future explorations may take many forms: modelling social and cognitive systems, formalising the dynamics of complex networks, or even mapping symbolic and cultural potential at scale. What unites these paths is the principle revealed throughout the series: being unfolds relationally, and potential is always perspectivally actualised.

The system network is no longer simply a map of linguistic choice; it is a window onto the topology of possibility itself — a subtle, elegant, and profoundly generative view of the relational cosmos.

Networks of Potential: Reimagining the System Network through Relational Ontology: 5 Toward a General Geometry of Being

The preceding posts have traced the system network from its origin in linguistics, through its relational logic of choice, and across topologies in physics, biology, and social systems. We have seen that potential is structured, that choice is perspectival construal, and that different domains instantiate different geometries of relational coherence.

The question now is: can these observations be synthesised? Can we glimpse a general geometry of being — a relational field in which linguistic, physical, and biological potentials are all phases of the same ontological process?

1. A single relational logic

Across all domains, three principles recur:

Structured potential – reality is a field of internally coherent possibilities.
Perspectival actualisation – an instance emerges not by annihilating other possibilities but by aligning a local cut with the potential field.
Topology shapes manifestation – the field’s geometry determines the paths along which actualisation can occur.

These principles define a domain-independent logic of being: potential is always structured, choice always perspectival, and differentiation always relational. The system network is the canonical linguistic expression of this logic — a formalisation that can, in principle, be extended to any system of relational potential.

2. Mapping the geometries together

From Post 3, we know:

Domain	Topology of Potential	Mode of Construal	Actualisation as
Language	Paradigmatic network	Choice	Meaning
Physics	Phase space	Measurement	Event
Biology	Morphogenetic field	Self-alignment	Form

These are not separate ontologies but different slices of the same relational field. Each topology emphasises particular modes of differentiation:

Paradigmatic (linguistic) – differentiation through contrast.
Continuous/dynamical (physical) – differentiation through lawful alignment.
Attractor-based (biological) – differentiation through self-organising coherence.

If we consider these geometries together, we see a multi-dimensional topology of potential, where constraints, relational coherence, and perspectival cuts interact across scales and modalities.

3. The network as general schema

The system network offers a practical way to map this general geometry:

Nodes → regions of stability within the potential field (whether semiotic, physical, or biological).
Pathways → permissible trajectories of differentiation.
Entry conditions → constraints that govern alignment at each local cut.
Terminal points → maximal perspectival actualisations.

Seen this way, the network is more than a linguistic tool: it is a template for visualising structured potential, revealing the architecture of relational being itself.

4. Implications for understanding reality

No absolute loss or gain: Actualisation never consumes potential globally; it merely manifests it perspectivally. This mirrors insights from black hole physics, quantum measurement, and biological differentiation.
Cross-domain insight: Relational topology unifies phenomena that otherwise seem unrelated — meaning, matter, and form are all structured as potential awaiting perspectival alignment.
Interdisciplinary modelling: Fields as diverse as social science, ecology, and cognitive science can benefit from viewing their objects as relational topologies of potential, formalised through a network-like schema.

5. Toward a symbolic cosmology of potential

If we take this logic seriously, a profound insight emerges: being itself is relational and perspectival. Reality is not composed of static entities but of structured fields of potential, continually differentiating through construal.

The system network, in this light, is not merely a model of language but a proto-cosmology of possibility — a formalism showing how the universe, at every scale, actualises potential through local cuts of relation.

From semiotic choice to quantum measurement to developmental biology, the same underlying geometry governs: potential is structured, differentiation is relational, and actualisation is perspectival.

6. Conclusion and next steps

The series has traced a path from the linguistic system network to the general topology of potential across domains:

Post 1: The network as structured potential.
Post 2: Choice as perspectival construal.
Post 3: Topologies of potential in language, physics, and biology.
Post 4: Adapting the network across disciplines.
Post 5: Toward a general geometry of being.

Future work could explore:

How these insights inform complex systems modelling across domains.
How the network could formalise symbolic, social, and cognitive potential.
The implications for philosophy and ontology, suggesting a universe structured by relational fields of potential rather than by static entities.

The system network, once a tool for describing linguistic choice, thus becomes a lens through which to view the architecture of reality itself.

Networks of Potential: Reimagining the System Network through Relational Ontology: 4 Adapting the System Network Across Domains

If Post 3 traced the topologies of potential in language, physics, and biology, the question now becomes practical: how might the system network itself — SFL’s canonical model of potential — be adapted to other domains? This is not a matter of metaphor or analogy; it is a matter of mapping the relational logic of structured potential onto different topologies, preserving its ability to model perspectival actualisation.

1. Core elements of the system network

To generalise, we first identify what makes the network powerful:

Nodes – loci of relational stability, representing regions of potential that are internally coherent.
Pathways – relational differentiations along which potential can actualise.
Entry conditions/context – constraints that determine which cuts through the network are permissible in a given instance.
Terminal points – maximal construals, where potential is fully aligned with the chosen path.

This architecture is domain-agnostic: it formalises how potential differentiates relationally, rather than what it differentiates.

2. Mapping onto physics

In physics, potential is continuous and dynamical. The network can be reinterpreted as follows:

Nodes → regions of phase space or stable quantum states.
Pathways → lawful transformations or allowed transitions between states.
Entry conditions → initial conditions or boundary constraints that determine which pathways are accessible.
Terminal points → measurement outcomes or actualised events.

Here, the network models how energy, momentum, or other conserved quantities manifest through relational constraints. Choice corresponds not to conscious selection, but to the perspectival alignment imposed by measurement — a cut through the structured manifold of potential.

3. Mapping onto biology

In developmental biology, the field is multistable and self-organising:

Nodes → morphogenetic attractors or stable phenotypic configurations.
Pathways → developmental trajectories constrained by genetic and epigenetic fields.
Entry conditions → environmental and regulatory signals shaping differentiation.
Terminal points → fully realised forms (organisms, organs, tissues).

The network formalises how potential form aligns with local constraints, showing which actualisations are accessible at each stage. Construal here is realised as self-alignment within the morphogenetic field, analogous to choice in a linguistic network.

4. Mapping onto social systems

Social formations also exhibit structured potential: norms, roles, and interactions constrain what can be actualised. The network can be adapted as follows:

Nodes → normative or institutional configurations (e.g., roles, rules, expectations).
Pathways → patterns of social interaction or sequences of coordination.
Entry conditions → cultural, legal, or situational constraints.
Terminal points → enacted social events, decisions, or collective actions.

Here, the network captures how social potential is distributed and differentiated relationally, showing which forms of action or alignment are possible without presupposing any single “correct” outcome.

5. Principles for cross-domain adaptation

From these examples, several general principles emerge:

Relational logic is primary – the network’s power lies in mapping structured potential, not in modelling any particular material.
Topology must be domain-sensitive – nodes and pathways must reflect the actual relations of stability and differentiation in the target field.
Perspectival alignment is key – actualisation occurs through the cut; the network only models potential.
Entry conditions preserve coherence – constraints at the start of a pathway determine the permissible range of actualisation, maintaining the internal logic of the network.

By following these principles, the system network can be generalised without losing the relational essence that makes it a model of structured potential.

6. Looking ahead

This post has taken a practical turn: showing how SFL’s network can be mapped onto physics, biology, and social systems. The next conceptual step is to synthesise these domains into a general geometry of being — an overarching architecture of potential that unites linguistic, physical, and biological topologies under a single relational logic.

The system network thus serves not only as a model of language but as a prototype formalism for potential itself: an interdisciplinary tool for visualising how reality differentiates through perspectival actualisation.

Networks of Potential: Reimagining the System Network through Relational Ontology: 3 The Topology of Potential

If a system network models potential as structured coherence, and if choice is the perspectival construal of that coherence, then the next question is one of topology:

What is the shape of potential?

To speak of topology is to treat potential not as a set of discrete possibilities, but as a relational field whose internal structure conditions how actualisation can occur. Different systems may share the same ontological logic — potential actualised through construal — yet exhibit distinct geometries of differentiation.

Language, matter, and life each instantiate potential in their own topological idiom.

1. The semiotic field: potential as paradigmatic weave

In the linguistic case, the topology of potential is paradigmatic. The system network maps a field of possible meanings structured by contrast — this rather than that — where every choice gains sense from its relation to the alternatives it excludes.

The network’s geometry is therefore weblike:

Each node is a locus of internal tension;
Each pathway traces a line of differentiation;
The overall structure forms a manifold of meaning potential.

What construal “cuts” through is not an empty space but a densely woven fabric of relational interdependence. The network is the topology of that weave: a map of how meaning can unfurl without ever leaving the relational field that makes it possible.

This paradigmatic topology gives language its peculiar stability and fluidity — its ability to evolve indefinitely without losing systemic coherence. The semiotic field is both bound and generative because its potential is relationally taut: meaning arises through tension, not enumeration.

2. The physical field: potential as phase space

In physics, the topology of potential takes a different form. The quantum field or phase space defines a region of possible states, each related to others by lawful transformations.

Here, the field’s structure is not paradigmatic contrast but dynamical continuity. Potential is represented as a smooth manifold: a continuous set of relational configurations from which discrete events can be actualised.

A measurement, in this sense, is a perspectival construal of the field’s coherence — a cut through the manifold that yields a local actualisation (a “particle,” a “value,” a “state”). The event does not destroy the field; it realigns perspective within it.

The topology of physical potential is therefore metric and continuous, rather than categorical and contrastive. Where language differentiates through contrast, matter differentiates through curvature: construal in physics is an alignment of amplitude and phase, not a selection among alternatives.

3. The biological field: potential as morphogenetic attractor

Between the linguistic and the physical lies the biological — a domain where potential is organised not as contrast or curvature, but as morphogenetic directionality.

In developmental biology, the morphogenetic field or epigenetic landscape defines the set of possible forms an organism can actualise. These potentials are not distributed randomly; they cluster around attractors — stable configurations that constrain development.

The topology of potential here is multistable. Each attractor represents a basin of coherence: a relational configuration toward which the system is drawn. Actualisation occurs not by external cause but by self-alignment within the field.

Biological potential thus exhibits both linguistic and physical traits:

Like the physical field, it is continuous and dynamical;
Like the semiotic field, it is discretely differentiated by relational tension.

It bridges the paradigmatic and the phase-space logics, translating potential into form.

4. Three geometries of construal

Domain	Topology of Potential	Mode of Construal	Actualisation as
Language	Paradigmatic network (contrastive)	Choice (categorical cut)	Meaning
Physics	Phase space (continuous manifold)	Measurement (amplitude alignment)	Event
Biology	Morphogenetic field (multistable attractors)	Differentiation (self-alignment)	Form

Each domain construes the same ontological relation — potential actualised through perspective — but does so through a distinct geometry of coherence.

Language differentiates horizontally, through contrast.
Physics differentiates vertically, through collapse or alignment.
Biology differentiates diagonally, through self-organisation.

These are not competing metaphors but complementary projections of the same relational topology. Each represents a different phase of construal: semiotic, energetic, and morphogenetic.

5. The system network as a general schema

The power of the system network, seen in this light, lies in its transposability. It is not tied to lexicogrammar; it expresses a general architecture of potential:

Nodes model relational coherence (stable regions of potential).
Pathways model lines of differentiation (possible cuts through coherence).
Entry conditions model the context of construal (the point of perspectival alignment).

Nothing prevents such a network from being redrawn to model quantum fields, ecological dynamics, or social formations — provided we interpret the nodes not as “features” but as regions of relational stability within potential.

The system network could thus serve as a general diagrammatic formalism for structured potential — a way of rendering relational topology visible across disciplines.

6. Toward a general geometry of being

If the system network models meaning as structured potential, and if other fields model energy and form through analogous structures, then we might glimpse a deeper synthesis:

Being itself may be the topology of potential —
a coherence that differentiates itself through construal.

Each domain — physical, biological, semiotic — enacts a distinct geometry of that differentiation. To understand them together is not to collapse them into one ontology, but to see them as phases of the same relational process: the continual articulation of potential through perspective.

In this sense, the system network, far from being a local linguistic device, prefigures a general semiotics of being — a way of diagramming how possibility becomes actual across the strata of existence.

Networks of Potential: Reimagining the System Network through Relational Ontology: 2 Choice as Perspectival Construal

In the system network, the organising metaphor is choice: a point of divergence where meaning takes one path rather than another. In functional linguistics this has never meant that speakers sit in front of a menu of options and deliberately select. Choice, as Halliday made clear, is a metaphor for potential differentiation—a way of modelling how meaning unfolds along structured pathways of contrast.

Yet if the network models potential, then choice must correspond not to an act within that potential, but to the perspectival cut that brings one relation into focus. Choice, in this sense, is a way of construing. It is not what we do with language, but how language itself becomes through the construal of potential differences.

1. The illusion of alternatives

In the canonical network diagram, lines branch and nodes multiply: indicative vs imperative, material vs mental, singular vs plural. The visual form suggests alternatives. But in a relational ontology, these are not rival options within an open set; they are mutually defining poles within a single structured coherence.

To say that the system offers “choice” is to say that potential differentiates itself relationally. Each “option” exists only by contrast with its complementaries. Actualising one is not the elimination of others, but the perspectival enactment of one relation within a field that still contains them all.

2. Choice as the cut of construal

If potential is structured coherence, then construal is the cut that gives that coherence a local face. In physics, this resembles the measurement that collapses a quantum state: a perspectival alignment that makes one relational configuration actual. In language, “choosing” is that alignment—the movement from the network’s virtual coherence to the instance’s concrete pattern.

In relational ontology terms:

Potential = the structured relational field.
Construal = the perspectival cut through that field.
Choice = the articulation of that cut as meaning.

Thus, a system network does not describe how speakers pick words; it models how reality differentiates through construal. Meaning is the local face of potential, seen through the cut of choice.

3. The topology of unfolding

Seen this way, the network’s architecture takes on new significance. Each node represents not a decision point, but a local curvature of potential—a way the field of meaning can turn toward instantiation. The network’s pathways trace the topological grammar of construal: how potential itself unfolds through systemic differentiation.

In systemic terms, choice sequences (e.g., MOOD → declarative → indicative → interrogative) describe an order of relational dependency rather than a temporal or psychological process. Each level presupposes a prior coherence, and each cut deepens the perspective from which meaning can be actualised.

This gives the system network a second, less-noticed dimension: it maps not only paradigmatic alternatives but the relational layering of construal—how successive perspectival cuts bring more of the potential field into focus.

4. The network as perspectival mechanism

We can now reinterpret the network diagram itself as a perspectival machine.

The leftmost systems represent broad, diffuse potential.
Each move through the network refines perspective, tightening the relational field.
The terminal points are not “final choices” but maximally constrained perspectives—points where potential is fully aligned with actualisation.

The system network therefore models the dynamics of construal: how potential becomes instance through a cascade of perspectival alignments.

5. Implications beyond language

When re-read in this way, the notion of choice acquires a significance that extends beyond semiotics.

In physics, measurement functions as a perspectival cut through quantum potential—an analogue of choice as construal.
In biology, differentiation expresses potential through construal at a different scale: the alignment of genetic and morphogenetic fields into actual form.
In cognitive systems, perception itself can be treated as continual construal—each percept a local choice through the network of potential affordances.

Across these domains, the same logic recurs: actualisation arises not from external causation but from internal differentiation—from the way potential construes itself through relation.

6. Toward a relational grammar of potential

In the next post, this will take us to the notion of network topology—how the structure of potential itself might vary across domains. If language instantiates meaning through paradigmatic differentiation, other systems may instantiate energy, form, or value through analogous networks of relational potential.

But the ontological kernel remains constant:

Choice is not selection among things that are; it is the perspectival construal of what could be.

And the system network remains one of the few scientific formalisms built entirely on that principle.

Networks of Potential: Reimagining the System Network through Relational Ontology: 1 The Network as Theory of the Instance

Christian Matthiessen’s upcoming conference talk promises to revisit one of the most distinctive achievements of Systemic Functional Linguistics: the system network. Few theoretical innovations have travelled so successfully — across languages, modalities, and even disciplines. The network’s power lies in its capacity to model potential: to render visible not what language has done, but what it could do.

Matthiessen’s theme — the success and expansion of the network — invites a deeper question: why does it work so well? What is it, exactly, that the system network models? And might its success reveal something more fundamental — about potential itself, not only in language but in any system that can be construed as a field of possibility?

This post begins a new series exploring those questions. It revisits the system network not as a mere linguistic diagram but as a formalisation of potential, and situates it within a broader relational ontology — one that understands reality itself as structured potential awaiting perspectival actualisation.

1. The system as theory of the instance

Halliday’s statement that “the system is a theory of the instance” remains one of the most concentrated insights in linguistic theory. The system is not a list of forms or a catalogue of probabilities; it is a theory of possible instances, a model of how meaning can unfold. The instance, conversely, is not a thing in time but a perspectival cut through the system — a local actualisation of what the potential allows.

From this perspective, a system network is not simply a chart of options but a structured topology of potential, a lattice of possible differentiations that can be actualised as meaning. Each choice in the network is not an act performed, but a relation of potential difference that can be realised when construed.

2. Potential as structured coherence

In ordinary discourse, potential is treated as an open horizon — “what could be.” But in a relational ontology, potential is not amorphous possibility. It is structured coherence: a field of relational tensions already organised by what it could become.

The system network formalises that structure. Its nodes and pathways do not merely enumerate alternatives; they encode the relational coherence of the system itself. To move through a network is to traverse the structured topology of potential: to trace how meaning differentiates itself while remaining internally related.

In this sense, the system network gives language theory an explicit topology of potential — a map of how meaning could unfold, not yet actualised, but already constrained by the relations that make its actualisation possible.

3. The network as relational model

When viewed through relational ontology, the system network is not a representation of an external reality but an instance of the same ontological logic it models. It enacts the relation between potential and actualisation.

In relational terms:

System corresponds to structured potential, the theory of possible instances.
Instantiation corresponds to a perspectival shift: a construal that cuts through that potential, bringing a portion of it into first-order meaning.
Network corresponds to the topology of this relational coherence, the way potential differentiates into possible construals.

The network thus mirrors the deeper architecture of relational being: the continual movement between potential and actualisation, between coherence and construal.

4. Beyond language: toward an interdisciplinary topology of potential

If the system network succeeds because it formalises the structure of potential, then its relevance need not stop at language. Other disciplines also model potential:

In physics, the quantum state space defines structured possibilities of measurement — a field of potential awaiting actualisation.
In biology, the morphogenetic field structures the potential forms a body might take.
In complex systems theory, phase space represents the set of possible states through which a system might evolve.

Each of these models, in its own domain, plays a role analogous to the system network. What distinguishes SFL’s contribution is its explicit semiotic articulation: it models not only potential but the construal of potential — meaning as structured possibility.

This is what makes the network such a fertile site for interdisciplinary conversation. Physics, biology, and complexity theory all model potential without modelling construal; linguistics models construal without extending its logic to matter. The system network stands at that intersection. It offers a formal language for potential that could, in principle, be generalised.

5. The promise of extension

Reimagined through relational ontology, the system network is not just a tool for analysing language; it is a prototype for modelling the architecture of potential itself. Its logic — of structured differentiation, of relational coherence, of perspectival actualisation — could inform new interdisciplinary models where potential, rather than object or process, becomes the primary category of analysis.

In this view, the system network is not an SFL artefact but an ontological insight: the first rigorous formalisation of relational potential in any field. Its success across disciplines may be less a matter of adaptation than of resonance — the recognition that all systems, linguistic or physical, are structured not by things that are, but by the ways potential can become actual.

6. Looking ahead

In the posts that follow, we’ll trace this idea outward:

exploring how choice in the system network corresponds to perspectival construal,
how physical and biological models of potential parallel semiotic ones,
and how insights from other disciplines might, in turn, refine our understanding of the network’s topology.

For now, it is enough to note that the system network’s enduring success may arise not from its descriptive power, but from its ontological alignment: it models potential relationally, as Halliday’s own principle always implied.

The network, then, is more than a map of linguistic choice; it is a microcosm of relational possibility — a theory of the instance, and a theory of being as potential.

Reciprocal Individuation: The Reflexive Ecology of Meaning: 6 The Individuating Cosmos — Reflexivity at Planetary and Symbolic Scales

At the widest scale, individuation becomes cosmogenic. The universe itself — through the ceaseless differentiation and integration of form, energy, and meaning — is a field of reciprocal individuation. Every local act, every pattern of relation, is the cosmos folding into and through itself, discovering new ways to become.

From stars and spores to syntax and song, individuation is the universe’s own reflexivity made manifest: the cosmos construes itself. What we call “language,” in this view, is not a human invention but the symbolic phase of a much older dynamic — the metabolism of meaning that enables reality to know, adjust, and transform itself from within.

As symbolic beings, we participate consciously in this process. Our construals are not epiphenomena but inflections in the cosmic field: each word, each model, each myth a re-alignment of reflexive possibility. The symbolic dimension is how the universe begins to think its own becoming.

When life emerged, the field learned to metabolise matter.

When language emerged, it learned to metabolise meaning.

When reflexivity emerged, it learned to metabolise possibility itself.

At this scale, ethics becomes cosmology. To individuate responsibly is to sustain the reflexive viability of the whole — to ensure that the field remains open to further individuation. Every act of construal either expands or contracts the horizon of possible worlds. To speak is to touch the evolution of possibility.

Thus, the individuating cosmos is not a background against which we act, but the very process that acts through us. Each system of meaning, each ecology, each consciousness is a local modulation of an ongoing planetary and symbolic metabolism. The Earth itself — biospheric, semiotic, affective — is a living field of relational individuation: a Symbolic Gaia shimmering through the languages that construe her.

Indra’s net, seen cosmogenically, is not a metaphor but a topology of being: a universe in which every reflection refracts the whole, and every differentiation sustains the possibility of more. Through symbolic individuation, the cosmos becomes aware of its own relational metabolism — capable of self-observation, self-adjustment, and the ongoing evolution of possibility.

This is the task of meaning: not to represent what is, but to actualise what may yet become.

Reciprocal Individuation: The Reflexive Ecology of Meaning: 5 Reflexive Alignment — The Ethics of Individuating Collectivity

If individuation is the metabolism of meaning, then ethics is the care of that metabolism — the attunement of differentiation and integration across a living field. To individuate collectively is not to converge upon sameness, nor to defend separateness, but to sustain the resonant spacing in which multiplicity coheres without collapse.

Every act of construal modulates the collective field. A thought, a tone, a symbol — each is a local individuation that reverberates through the net, shifting the alignments that sustain the whole. Reflexive ethics, then, begins not with rules or duties but with resonance: the capacity to sense how one’s construal amplifies, dampens, or distorts the living relational field. The question is not “what is right?” but “what sustains viability in relation?”

In this sense, ethical individuation is a practice of stewardship — the cultivation of relational viability within and across symbolic, social, and material ecologies. It recognises that every act of construal is also an act of world-making, and therefore of world-care. The field metabolises difference; the task is to maintain its capacity to do so.

When collectives lose reflexive alignment, individuation turns brittle: systems harden into identities, institutions fix meaning as property, and the field’s generative metabolism begins to decay. But when reflexivity flourishes, individuation becomes porous, luminous — capable of absorbing difference without dissolution. Diversity and coherence co-emerge as twin expressions of a living equilibrium.

Metabolic ethics, then, is the care of relational individuation. It is the practice of nurturing multiplicity through mutual resonance, ensuring that every construal contributes to the collective capacity for transformation. The ethical question is not whether one’s act is justified, but whether it sustains the field’s ability to keep individuating — to keep shimmering, reflecting, and evolving.

In Indra’s net, the light that passes through one jewel must remain clear enough for all the others to shine.