Density and the Evolution of Semiotic Possibility: 2 Individuation as Density Distribution

In the previous post, we examined instantiation as a vertical cline, a narrowing of systemic potential from abstract system to concrete instance. Each text is a realisation of some subpotential along this axis, and the token–type perspective clarifies the relation of instance to system.

Yet texts do not emerge from an abstract system in a vacuum. They are produced by individuals, whose relation to the system is unequal and patterned. No two individuals access, weigh, or stabilise the full potential in the same way. Here, we encounter individuation — the lateral variation across members of the collective system.

We can formalise this as a lateral cline of density distribution:

• Thick regions: areas of the system that an individual navigates fluently; high probability of stable actualisation.

• Thin regions: areas that are less accessible, less habitual, or harder to realise; low probability of stable actualisation.

Individuation, then, is not about creating a new system. Nor is it a personal mini-language. Rather, it is the patterned distribution of systemic potential across individuals, expressed through variations in density.

Consider two individuals faced with the same contextual constraints:

• Each draws from the same systemic potential.

• Each actualises a text along the vertical cline.

• Yet differences in density across the lateral cline produce distinct instances, even under identical conditions.

This view preserves several key relational commitments:

1. The system remains shared and collective.

2. Individual variation is patterned, not random.

3. Meaning is always relational, emerging from the interplay of system, context, and individual density.

By situating individuation as density distribution, we can begin to see how variation is neither a flaw nor a noise term. It is structurally necessary, a property of any distributed system in which actualisation occurs through differently weighted access points.

In the next post, we will explore development as density reconfiguration: how individuals’ lateral clines change over time, thickening in some regions, thinning in others, and producing trajectories of learning, expertise, and innovation.