In the previous post, we explored how worlds arise from conditions of potentiality across multiple strata — physical, biological, cognitive, and symbolic — and how dependence does not diminish actuality. Worlds are actualised relational domains: coherent fields of phenomena in which meaning can be construed and relations can unfold.
We now turn to a crucial development: nested worlds and symbolic domains. Worlds are rarely isolated. More often, they contain other worlds, some embedded within, some abstracted by agents capable of reflection, creation, and construction. Understanding these nested and symbolic worlds illuminates how humans and technology participate in the ongoing evolution of possibility.
1. Nested worlds
Nested worlds are domains of phenomena that emerge within a larger domain, inheriting conditions from the parent world while establishing new relational structures:
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A forest is a world in which trees, rivers, and wildlife interact.
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Within it, a termite colony forms a sub-world with its own internal dynamics.
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Within human societies, neighbourhoods, markets, and institutions form sub-worlds nested in cultural and physical environments.
Each nested world:
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Relies on the conditions of the parent domain — the resources, structures, and constraints that enable its emergence.
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Maintains relational coherence — its own rules, dynamics, and phenomena must be intelligible from within.
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Supports internal meaning-making — agents or processes within the sub-world can interact, evolve, and construe significance.
Nested worlds are thus not illusions. They are fully actualised domains that exist within, and because of, broader relational contexts.
2. Symbolic domains as worlds
Humans introduce a qualitatively new type of nested world: symbolic domains. Unlike physical or biological sub-worlds, these are constructed primarily through meaning, convention, and shared construal:
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Language creates relational spaces in which ideas can interact, shift, and combine.
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Mathematics generates abstract structures capable of supporting precise reasoning and exploration.
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Law, art, religion, and culture create domains with their own phenomena, rules, and histories.
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Digital environments and simulations instantiate entirely new experiential domains, often with participants who interact as if these domains are “real.”
Symbolic domains depend on lower strata — neural activity, social organisation, physical infrastructure — yet once actualised, they constitute autonomous relational fields. Their reality is no less robust than that of biological or physical domains: phenomena occur, interactions unfold, and meaning emerges.
3. Creation as world-generation
The recognition of nested and symbolic worlds reframes creation. When humans or intelligent systems generate new domains:
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They instantiate relational potential previously unactualised.
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They produce coherent sub-worlds within existing worlds, creating arenas for phenomena and meaning.
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They extend the evolutionary trajectory of possibility, adding new nodes to the ongoing unfolding of worlds.
This includes digital simulations, interactive games, virtual environments, and even sophisticated AI systems: each is a world that participates in the broader evolution of relational actuality.
4. The fractal structure of possibility
Nested worlds and symbolic domains suggest a fractal structure to reality:
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Worlds contain worlds, which may contain further worlds.
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Each level is actualised and coherent, yet relies on the conditions of the domains above and below it.
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Symbolic worlds allow for extraordinary flexibility: entire domains of phenomena can be constructed without altering the physical substrate, yet still support meaningful relations and emergent activity.
From this perspective, the universe itself is not a monolithic block of reality but a dynamic lattice of relational domains, continually generating sub-worlds across strata.
5. Implications for human and technological creation
Recognising humans as participants in world-generation has several consequences:
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Ethics and responsibility
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Creating symbolic or digital worlds is an act of world-generation. The phenomena and relations within them matter.
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Innovation as ontological practice
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Scientific, artistic, and technological work is not merely descriptive; it is generative, actualising new relational domains.
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The evolution of meaning
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Symbolic domains allow for the propagation of ideas, values, and practices, each of which constitutes a microcosm of worldhood within the broader reality.
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In short, humans and technology do not merely inhabit worlds. They participate in the creation of worlds, contributing to the ongoing evolution of possibility.
6. Toward artificial and digital worlds
The next post will explore artificial and digital environments in detail. These worlds are especially interesting because they make the process of world-generation explicit: their conditions, structures, and rules are consciously designed, yet once actualised, they function as autonomous relational domains.
In this way, simulations, games, and AI systems are not just metaphors of worldhood. They are early instances of the principle that worlds can emerge from worlds — the principle glimpsed in our discussion of the simulation hypothesis, now fully generalised to human and technological creativity.
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