Resonances: Structured Potential Across Domains: 5 Selection, Amplification, Excitation: On the Structure of Endurance

Across three very different domains — neuroscience, cosmology, and quantum field theory — a common structural motif has appeared.

In neuronal group selection, as articulated by Gerald Edelman, endogenous variation is differentially stabilised through value-modulated coordination.

In large-scale cosmology, mapped in surveys such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and constrained by measurements from Planck, minute density fluctuations are amplified through gravitational dynamics into persistent filamentary structure.

In quantum field theory, systematised in texts such as Quantum Field Theory, particles are treated not as substances but as dynamically stabilised excitations of underlying fields.

The domains are not reducible to one another.

Their mechanisms are distinct.

Their scales are incomparable.

And yet, a structural resonance remains.

---

From Imposition to Endurance

What disappears across these accounts is the need for external instruction.

• Neuronal structure is not written into the brain from outside.

• Cosmic filaments are not designed by blueprint.

• Particles are not miniature objects inserted into spacetime.

In each case, persistence arises from the internal dynamics of a field of possibility.

Variation is present.

Differential reinforcement occurs.

Certain configurations endure.

Endurance replaces imposition as the explanatory centre.

This is the shift.

---

Structured Potential

Each domain begins with structured potential:

• A neural repertoire shaped by development.

• A mass-energy distribution containing minute asymmetries.

• A quantum field defined by symmetry and dynamical law.

None is blank. None is inert uniformity. Each is already differentiated possibility.

Within such fields, most fluctuations dissipate. Only some trajectories stabilise. Persistence is not universal; it is selective, amplificatory, or dynamically permitted.

Selection.

Amplification.

Excitation.

Three names for domain-specific mechanisms.

One structural pattern: stabilised relational configuration within constraint.

---

The Structure of Endurance

What endures is not substance imposed from outside. It is patterned activity sustained by the dynamics of the system itself.

Neuronal groups endure as reinforced coordination.

Filaments endure as gravitationally stabilised mass distribution.

Particles endure as quantised field excitation.

In each case, object-like persistence is derivative.

The enduring entity is not fundamental.

The structured field is.

This does not collapse neuroscience into cosmology, nor cosmology into quantum theory. It does not license metaphor inflation. It does not erase domain differences.

It isolates a structural insight:

Persistence can arise without instruction.

Coherence can emerge without blueprint.

Discrete stability can be derivative of structured potential.

---

Meaning and Its Absence

It is equally important to state what has not appeared.

In none of these cases is there meaning.

No construal operates in neuronal selection as such.

No signification structures cosmic filaments.

No interpretation governs quantum excitation.

These are non-semiotic domains.

And yet they demonstrate something crucial for any ontology of meaning: before construal can operate, there must already be a world in which certain trajectories persist rather than vanish.

Meaning does not create endurance ex nihilo.

It articulates within already stabilised relational fields.

Endurance precedes articulation.

---

The Breakthrough

The convergence across these domains does not prove an ontology. It does not derive metaphysics from physics. It does not extract philosophy from cosmology.

What it does is remove a constraint.

If persistence can arise through internal differentiation and differential stabilisation, then we are no longer forced to imagine structure as imposed form on passive matter.

Structured potential is sufficient for endurance.

Selection, amplification, excitation — different mechanisms, same structural motif — show that stability need not be externally designed, nor internally represented as a blueprint.

It can be dynamically sustained.

And once sustained, it can be further articulated.

The next question, then, is no longer how order is imposed.

It is how articulation operates within already enduring fields.

That question belongs to meaning.