Relational Cuts: 2 System and Instance

Why actuality is perspectival, not temporal

In the previous instalment, we introduced the cut: the relational distinction that actualises a phenomenon. Phenomena arise not as pre-existing objects, but as outcomes of these cuts. Observation is not passive; it is constitutive. With that foundation in place, we can now examine a second fundamental distinction: system and instance.

System: structured potential

A system is a structured potential. It is not a collection of things, nor is it a hidden layer behind phenomena. It is a set of possibilities, a network of relations and constraints that defines what could be actualised under certain conditions.

Systems are inherently perspectival. They do not exist in time as entities waiting to be instantiated; they are frameworks of potentialities that are revealed only through relational cuts. Physics is aware of systems because its methods select, stabilise, and constrain certain possibilities. The system is the stage; the cuts are the acts that actualise phenomena upon it.

Instance: perspectival actualisation

An instance is the perspectival actualisation of a system. It is not a temporal event that “comes into being” in the conventional sense. It is a shift in construal: a specific configuration within the system that has been made intelligible through a cut.

Where a system defines what is possible, an instance defines what has been actualised from those possibilities. The instance is never separable from the system that constrains it, nor from the cut that actualises it. It is the relational crystallisation of potential into intelligibility.

System and instance in physics

Consider quantum mechanics, where a measurement selects an eigenstate. The formalism does not describe a particle changing over time in an absolute sense. Instead, it defines a system of potential states and describes how a particular outcome is actualised through the experimental cut. The eigenstate is the instance; the Hilbert space and associated operators define the system.

This perspective reframes familiar physics without altering its mathematics or predictions. It shows that what we call a “quantum event” is not a temporal happening of a pre-existing object, but the actualisation of a relational potential within a system.

Why actuality is perspectival

Actuality is perspectival because it always arises within the context of a system and through a cut. There is no viewpoint from nowhere. Every instance is tied to a system, every phenomenon to the cuts that bring it into being. Perspective is not a limitation or a flaw; it is the structural condition of intelligibility.

By framing actuality this way, we avoid common metaphysical traps:

• Instances are not “produced” from the system in a temporal sense.

• The system is not a hidden reality that underlies phenomena.

• Observation does not inject new substance; it actualises potential within constraints.

The structural payoff

Understanding system and instance consolidates the ontology we began with the cut:

• Systems define the arena of possibility.

• Cuts define the distinctions that actualise phenomena.

• Instances are the perspectival outcomes of these cuts within systems.

Physics provides the motivation and the context, but the concepts themselves are general. They illuminate why phenomena appear intelligible, why observation matters, and why actuality cannot be understood as temporal creation or emergence.

The next instalment will deepen this framework, disentangling actualisation from realisation, emergence, and other metaphors, and showing how phenomena occur without adding anything “new” to reality. System and instance are the architecture; actualisation is the operation that animates it.