What a System Allows: Preface

This series explores systems not as deterministic engines or causal chains, but as structured possibility spaces. A system does not cause outcomes; it permits or precludes certain actualisations based on its internal structure. What a system allows is the set of admissible cuts — the selections that can be made without violating the structure itself.

Admissibility differs from constraint in two ways. First, it is structural, not normative: it defines what is possible within the system without implying what should occur. Second, it is relational, not causal: the system does not produce events, it organises the landscape of possibilities in which events may appear.

Actualisation is a perspectival selection among admissible cuts. It does not follow from teleology, causation, or inevitability. A given cut is actualised relative to the system’s structure and the perspective from which it is enacted. Nothing about admissibility requires or predicts a specific outcome; it only defines what is possible in principle.

Across the series, we will explore how systems define admissibility, how cuts are actualised, and how stability, interaction, and limits emerge without invoking causal or teleological explanations. The goal is to cultivate a relational understanding of systemic possibility, where orientation and navigation replace prediction and control.