Lineage of Potential in the Relational Ontology

1. Readiness (inclination + ability)

• Concept: Potential as a system or phenomenon’s readiness to actualise.

• Aspects:

  1. Inclination – the tendency or predisposition toward certain outcomes.

  2. Ability – the structural or functional competence to realise those outcomes.

• Contribution: Highlighted that not all possibilities are equal; some paths are easier, more “open,” or more immediately actualisable.

• Limitation: Smuggled in temporal, causal, and agent-like metaphors; suggested latent content waiting to be triggered.

• Resolution: Later approaches retained the insight of “differentiated availability” but reframed it relationally.

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2. Latent structure / space of possibilities

• Concept: Potential as a space of constrained possibilities, not as readiness.

• Contribution:

  • Removed temporal and causal overtones of readiness.

  • Positioned potential as formal, structured, and constrained rather than “stored.”

• Limitation: Still invited metaphors of “movement” or “occupying” potential; risked treating potential as ontologically prior.

• Role in lineage: Transitional step from dispositional to structural view.

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3. System as theory of instances

• Concept: Potential is not something a system “has”; potential is the system, understood as a theory of possible instances.

• Contribution:

  • Collapsed potential into formal structure.

  • Eliminated need for latent content or stored readiness.

  • Made the generativity of potential explicit without metaphysics.

• Key insight: A system is productive, not merely classificatory; actual instances are contingent events satisfying the system’s constraints.

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4. Instantiation as perspectival cut

• Concept: Potential and instance are not stages or temporal phases; they are poles of description.

• Contribution:

  • Dissolves process-based confusions (no “becoming actual”).

  • Potential and instance co-exist, relationally, under different cuts.

• Key insight: Ontology is perspectival rather than causal or temporal.

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5. Sub-potential (localised constraining)

• Concept: Within a system, one can define sub-potentials: restricted theories of possible instances.

• Contribution:

  • Explains patterned variation and regularity without ontological layering.

  • Preserves structure while allowing local constraints to be articulated.

• Key insight: Nested possibilities can exist without creating new metaphysical levels; all sub-potentials are still potentials-as-theory.

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6. Horizon

• Concept: Potential as the experienced or describable edge of possibility under a cut.

• Contribution:

  • Captures novelty and openness without invoking readiness or latent content.

  • Horizon is relational: it shifts with actualisations and construal.

  • Provides a forward-facing notion of potential, crucial for creativity, co-individuation, and evolutionary thinking.

• Key insight: Horizon operationalises the edge of possibility, not the system itself.

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7. Evolution of potential

• Concept: Potential evolves historically through differentiation, stabilisation, and collapse.

• Contribution:

  • Frames potential as dynamic, historically situated, yet non-teleological.

  • Supports narratives of symbolic and systemic evolution without invoking progress or predetermined outcomes.

• Key insight: Potential’s shape and content are influenced by prior actualisations; novelty emerges relationally.

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8. Explicitly rejected notions

• Potential as causal power – rejected because potential is relational, not mechanistic.

• Potential as stored content – rejected to avoid latent or substance-like metaphors.

• Potential as value-laden – biological, social, or institutional “value” cannot constitute potential.

• Potential as pre-meaning substrate – all potential is already relationally tied to construal.

• Potential as probability distribution – rejected to prevent misreading relational potential as statistical.

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9. Deep continuity

Across all these cuts, the core principle remains:

Potential gradually shed metaphors of readiness, waiting, force, or storage, and crystallised as structured, relational possibility intelligible only under a perspectival cut, with room for nested constraints, horizons, and historical evolution.

This lineage shows the careful choreography: what started as intuitive readiness eventually became a fully relational, perspectival, and evolutionary notion — precise enough to ground the ontology while remaining generative for further work.