The Universal Complementarity of Construal: 3 The Reconstruction of the Metalevel

The metalevel has long occupied a privileged place in theoretical imagination.

To move to a metalevel is to rise above.

To theorise is to stand over what is theorised.

To explain is to ascend.

This vertical metaphor runs deep. It structures our sense of rigor, objectivity, and authority.

But if complementarity is intrinsic to the cline of instantiation, then the metalevel cannot be what we have taken it to be.

It must be reconstructed.

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1. The Classical Picture

In its familiar form, the architecture looks like this:

• Events occur.

• Patterns are abstracted.

• Laws are formulated.

• Theories explain the laws.

• Metatheories ground the theories.

Each step ascends.

Each level claims greater generality and explanatory power.

The movement appears cumulative and hierarchical.

The metalevel is conceived as ontologically superior.

But this conception depends on a hidden assumption: that abstraction produces entities of a different order of being.

The cline of instantiation does not permit that assumption.

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2. Directionality, Not Elevation

On the cline, what changes is not ontological status but directional positioning.

A stabilised pattern of recurrence functions as constraint relative to further events. From that direction, it appears theoretical.

But the same pattern can itself be treated as event relative to a broader construal. From that direction, it appears empirical.

Nothing has changed except orientation.

What we call “metalevel” is simply construal from the pole of structured potential.

It is not a higher realm. It is a different vantage.

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3. The Reversibility of Explanation

Explanation has traditionally implied asymmetry:

• Law explains event.

• Theory explains law.

• Foundation explains structure.

But if complementarity is structural, explanation becomes reversible.

A law explains an event only relative to a particular positioning along the cline. Shift the positioning, and the law becomes instance within a broader theoretical field.

The explanatory relation persists, but its direction is not absolute.

There is no final plateau from which explanation can no longer be repositioned.

Every explanation is itself explicable.

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4. The End of Vertical Privilege

This does not collapse structure. The cline remains real. Constraints remain operative. Some construals genuinely organise vast regions of potential.

What dissolves is vertical privilege — the idea that one position on the cline is intrinsically more real, more foundational, or more authoritative than another.

The metalevel loses its ontological exceptionalism.

It becomes a function of direction.

And direction is always reversible.

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5. Beyond Reduction and Relativism

Two familiar responses attempt to stabilise theory:

1. Reductionism — everything is grounded in a lowest level.

2. Relativism — all levels are equal and arbitrary.

The reconstructed metalevel allows neither.

There is no lowest level immune from repositioning.

There is no arbitrary equivalence among construals.

The cline is structured. Constraints are asymmetrical relative to any given position. But asymmetry is local, not absolute.

The authority of a theory derives from its relational power within a structured field — not from its altitude.

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6. The Metalevel as Relational Function

We can now say:

A metalevel is not a place.

It is a relational function within construal.

To operate at a metalevel is to treat a pattern as structured potential relative to further actualisations.

That is all.

And because any pattern can be so treated, the metalevel is universally available — and universally reversible.

There is no final metalevel.

Only shifting orientations within structured potential.

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7. The Consequence for Theorising

If this reconstruction holds, the aspiration to produce a “theory of everything” must be reinterpreted.

Such a theory would not escape complementarity. It would merely occupy a highly general position along the cline — one that would itself become instance under a broader construal.

The dream of ultimate elevation dissolves.

But something more interesting takes its place:

Theory becomes the disciplined exploration of perspective within structured potential.

The task is no longer to climb.

It is to position.

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In the next post, we turn to the opposition that underwrites much of modern epistemology: data and theory.

If the metalevel has been reconstructed as directional rather than vertical, then the idea of theory-free data becomes untenable.

And with it, the last refuge of the illusion that knowledge begins at the bottom.