Across the preceding posts, we traced a structural motif through three domains:
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Neuronal group selection in the work of Gerald Edelman
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Large-scale cosmological filament formation mapped by projects such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
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Quantum field excitation formalised in texts such as Quantum Field Theory
In each case, persistent structure emerged from internal differentiation and differential stabilisation rather than external instruction.
The recurrence of this explanatory form invites comparison. It does not license reduction.
This post marks the boundary.
Explanatory Morphology
The claim of the series is methodological before it is ontological.
When a system is described as structured potential, and when stability is understood as patterned actualisation within constraint, similar explanatory shapes may appear across domains. These similarities concern form of explanation, not shared substance.
We may call this explanatory morphology: recurrent patterns in how stability is accounted for.
The morphology observed is minimal:
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A differentiated field
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Variation within that field
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Differential stabilisation
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Emergent persistence
This pattern does not imply that neuroscience depends on cosmology, that cosmology depends on quantum theory, or that ontology is extracted from physics.
It identifies a shared explanatory shape.
Where the Domains Diverge
The differences are decisive.
Neuroscience
In neuronal group selection, stabilisation is biologically mediated. “Value” signals operate within an organism. The domain is material and non-semiotic. No construal is operative at the level of synaptic reinforcement as such.
Cosmology
In large-scale structure formation, gravitational dynamics amplify density fluctuations within a physical substrate. Cosmological description presupposes a mind-independent distribution of mass-energy.
Quantum Field Theory
In quantum field theory, particles are excitations of mathematically defined fields governed by symmetry and interaction terms. The field is treated as physically real and ontologically prior to excitation.
Each domain presupposes an unconstrued physical substrate. Each operates within the methodological commitments of contemporary physics or biology.
A relational ontology does not.
The Crucial Difference: Construal
In the scientific domains examined, fields and substrates are described as existing independently of perspective. Instantiation is treated as temporal production — a physical event unfolding in time.
Within a relational ontology, by contrast:
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There is no unconstrued phenomenon.
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A “field” is not an independently existing substrate.
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Instantiation is a perspectival cut, not a temporal manufacturing process.
Structured potential is not a physical medium. It is the systematic organisation of possible actualisations relative to a construal.
This difference is not minor. It is foundational.
Parallel explanatory form does not collapse ontological commitment.
Why the Resonance Matters
If the domains diverge so sharply, why trace the resonance at all?
Because it removes a persistent intuition: that order must be imposed.
Across physics and biology, persistence is no longer explained primarily by external design or imposed blueprint. It is explained by differential stabilisation within structured constraint.
This shift in explanatory morphology makes certain ontological framings intelligible. It renders the idea of structured potential less alien, less mystical, less dependent on metaphor.
They demonstrate that endurance without imposition is coherent.
That is enough.
Not Totalisation
This series is not a metaphysical unification scheme.
It does not claim that:
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Quantum fields are semiotic systems.
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Cosmology presupposes construal.
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Neural dynamics secretly encode ontology.
Nor does it collapse distinct strata into a single explanatory vocabulary.
The aim has been narrower: to observe that when stability arises from recurrence within constraint, explanation tends to take a recognisable structural form.
The Boundary Holds
A relational ontology remains irreducible to physics because it addresses a different question.
Physics asks: how do physical configurations evolve under law?
Relational ontology asks: how is structured potential articulated in actualisation, and how does construal constitute phenomenon?
These are not interchangeable inquiries.
The resonance traced across domains clarifies a possibility: endurance need not be imposed from outside.
But endurance alone does not generate meaning.
Construal does that.
And construal belongs to another register entirely.
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