There is a moment in theoretical work when something long assumed to be local reveals itself as structural.
The midpoint on the cline of instantiation once appeared to be such a local curiosity. Viewed from the pole of potential, it presented itself as instance. Viewed from the pole of event, it presented itself as structured possibility — a theory of instances. It seemed to occupy a hinge position.
But the hinge was not the point.
The hinge exposed the rule.
1. The Cline Is Not a Ladder
The cline of instantiation has often been treated descriptively: a gradient between system and instance, between structured potential and actualisation. Yet the temptation remains to read it hierarchically — as if potential were “above” and instance “below,” or as if one region were more theoretical and another more empirical.
This is a misreading.
The cline is not a vertical hierarchy. It is a relational gradient. And gradients do not generate ontological tiers; they generate perspectival shifts.
Once this is seen, a deeper consequence follows.
2. Reversibility Is Not Local
What first becomes visible at the so-called midpoint is reversibility:
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From the pole of potential, a construal appears as instance.
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From the pole of event, the same construal appears as system — as structured possibility constraining further actualisations.
But this reversibility is not confined to the midpoint.
It is intrinsic to any point along the cline.
Why?
Because any stabilised pattern of actualisation can function as structured constraint relative to further events.
And any structured potential can itself be treated as instance relative to a broader potential.
There is no position on the cline that is exempt from this dual legibility.
Reversibility is not a feature of certain zones.
It is a property of the cline itself.
3. Complementarity as Structural Condition
This observation reconstrues complementarity.
Complementarity is not merely a feature of particular scientific domains, nor an epistemic inconvenience arising from incompatible descriptions. It is the structural condition of construal wherever potential is actualised.
Any construal may be read:
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Upward, as instance-of.
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Downward, as theory-of.
The distinction between data and theory, phenomenon and metaphenomenon, event and law, is therefore not ontological but directional.
A “metalevel” is not a higher realm of being.
It is the same relational field viewed from the pole of potential.
4. The Dissolution of Vertical Privilege
Modern thought has tended to stabilise one direction of construal as superior:
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Empiricism privileges instance.
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Rationalism privileges system.
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Scientific explanation often privileges law over event.
But if reversibility is structural, no region of the cline can claim ontological priority.
Potential is real.
Actualisation is real.
Neither grounds the other absolutely.
Each emerges through perspectival positioning within the same relational gradient.
Hierarchy survives only as directional convenience.
5. Beyond the Midpoint
The midpoint made the structure visible because it dramatised dual legibility. But the insight does not depend on identifying such a region.
Even in domains where no clear midpoint is articulated — for example, in discussions of complementarity in quantum theory associated with Niels Bohr — what is at stake is not the coexistence of incompatible descriptions, but the perspectival structuring of potential and event.
The universal claim is stronger:
Complementarity is not a peculiarity of physics.
It is the condition of any theory that construes structured potential actualised as event.
6. The Consequence
If this is right, then the dream of a final, absolutely superordinate metalevel is structurally incoherent. Any “theory of everything” would itself become instance from another direction of construal. Its claim to ultimacy would dissolve upon repositioning along the cline.
This is not relativism.
The cline is structured. Constraints are real. Actualisations are not arbitrary.
What dissolves is the fantasy of vertical exemption.
The midpoint was never the destination.
It was the revelation.
What it revealed is that complementarity is not local, not disciplinary, not methodological.
It is the universal structure of construal wherever potential becomes actual.
In the next post, we turn to the most entrenched casualty of this insight: the presumed opposition between data and theory.
And we ask whether “data” has ever been anything other than theory viewed from the pole of instance.
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