Having glimpsed the River of Becoming with Liora, we now return to analytic precision. Whitehead’s universe is built of actual occasions — discrete, self-constituting events whose ontological reality is primary. In this world, becoming is everything; stability is derivative.
Halliday’s relational semiotics, by contrast, introduces the instance: a pole of perspectival instantiation, bound not by ontological necessity but by the systemic potential of language. The difference is subtle, yet decisive.
1. Whitehead’s Actual Occasion
Whitehead writes:
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Each actual occasion is an event, a “unit of experience.”
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Each is self-creating, temporally situated, and fully determinate once it occurs.
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Relations between occasions constitute the flow of reality; potentialities are antecedents, but the event itself is ontologically primary.
Whitehead’s ontology is process-first. The world is an endless concatenation of events. To understand a phenomenon is to follow the unfolding of actual occasions.
2. Halliday’s Instance Pole
Halliday’s instance is radically different:
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It is one pole of a cline of instantiation: potential ↔ instance.
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A text is an instance; its systemic potential is not behind it, and it is not generated from it.
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Instantiation is perspectival — it is the recognition of a cut through potential.
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Crucially, the instance does not produce the system; the system does not generate the instance as an ontological necessity.
Where Whitehead’s actual occasion is being, Halliday’s instance is recognition of relational potential actualised. The difference is the pivot from ontology to perspective.
3. Comparing Dynamics
Whiteheadian events and Hallidayan instances share one appearance: both are discrete, temporally bounded, and interact with antecedent possibilities. But the axes differ:
| Aspect | Whitehead | Halliday |
|---|---|---|
| Primacy | Event | Potential (system) |
| Relation | Ontological becoming | Perspectival cut |
| Temporal | Constitutive | Experiential/logogenetic |
| System | Dependent on prior occasions | Independent, constraining potential |
| Emergence | Event produces reality | Instance actualises potential |
The seductive similarity — both “dynamic” and “event-like” — masks the ontological divergence. Whitehead’s events exist in themselves; Halliday’s instances exist only in relation to the system and to potential.
4. Where Whitehead Enriches
Whitehead helps us feel instantiation:
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It highlights the temporal unfolding (logogenesis).
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It emphasises the emergent appearance of patterns.
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It gives metaphorical weight to the lived experience of meaning.
But this metaphorical enrichment must not be mistaken for ontological equivalence. The instance pole remains a perspectival cut, not an actual occasion. Whitehead’s primacy of becoming cannot be fully adopted without collapsing instantiation into temporal production.
5. Where Relational Ontology Restrains
Relational ontology restores discipline:
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Potential is never exhausted by instances.
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Instances do not generate system.
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Temporal unfolding (logogenesis) does not ontologise becoming.
The tension between Whitehead and Halliday illuminates the subtlety of instantiation: it is felt like process, but it is not process ontologically. Only by maintaining that separation can we enjoy the insight Whitehead offers without destabilising our relational foundations.
6. Conclusion
Event and instance are similar in appearance but distinct in essence. Whitehead’s actual occasions give us the visceral thrill of temporal becoming; Halliday’s instances give us the conceptual rigour of perspectival cuts. The interplay of the two is not a merger but a dialogue: one enriches sensation, the other preserves structure.
Our next step is to explore eternal objects and systemic potential, another point where Whitehead’s metaphysics and Halliday’s relational semiotics converge and diverge — a space where the shimmer of possibility meets the architecture of constraint.
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