The Potential of Possibility: III. When Potential Meets Possibility

We have separated two concepts that are easily confused.

Possibility concerns what a relational situation leaves open.

Potential concerns what a participant is ready or able to take up within that situation.

But separation is not the end of the story.

For something to become actual, the two must somehow meet.

Consider the open door once again.

The open door makes passage possible.

A person who can walk possesses the relevant potential.

But neither possibility nor potential is itself a passage.

The passage occurs when the person moves through the door.

Something has happened.

The possibility has been taken up.

The potential has been exercised.

And the relation has changed.

The person is no longer on one side of the doorway.

The doorway is now behind them.

What was previously a possibility has become an actuality, and that actuality has altered the relational situation from which further possibilities arise.

This gives us a different way of thinking about becoming.

Becoming is not simply the realisation of something that was already contained within a participant.

Nor is it simply the arrival of something that was waiting in a field of possibilities.

It occurs when a participant's potential enters into a relation with a possibility.

But even this needs a little care.

Potential does not cause possibility.

Possibility does not cause potential.

The two are mutually situated.

A field makes certain forms of participation possible.

A participant's capacities and inclinations make some of those possibilities available to that participant.

When the relations permit it, a possibility can be taken up.

And when it is taken up, the relations may change.

This is why actualisation is more than the disappearance of uncertainty.

Something new has happened to the world.

The person who walks through the doorway has changed their relation to the rooms.

The seed that grows has changed its relation to its environment.

The musician who learns a new technique changes what can be done with the instrument.

The thinker who acquires a new concept changes what distinctions can be made within a field of thought.

In each case, actualisation does not merely fill a vacant place in a pre-existing inventory of possibilities.

It transforms the relations that generated those possibilities in the first place.

This gives us a recursive picture.

Relation → difference → constraint → possibility → potential → actualisation → new relation.

But the arrow between possibility and potential should not be read as a mechanical sequence.

Potential does not sit between possibility and becoming like a component in a machine.

Rather, it describes the participant's readiness to take up something that the relational field makes possible.

And when that possibility is taken up, becoming occurs.

The result is a new relational configuration.

Which means that the process does not end with actualisation.

The new relation generates new differences.

Those differences establish new constraints.

Those constraints open some possibilities and close others.

And participants encounter the changed field with changed potentials.

The cycle begins again.

This may also explain why novelty is possible without being arbitrary.

The future is not predetermined because the present does not contain a single necessary continuation.

But neither is the future unconstrained.

The present establishes a field of possibilities.

Participants occupy different positions within that field.

Their potentials make some possibilities available to them.

What they take up changes the relations.

And those changed relations alter what can happen next.

Novelty therefore emerges neither from nowhere nor from a hidden future waiting to be revealed.

It emerges from the transformation of relations through actualisation.

This has an interesting consequence for our understanding of potential.

Potential is not simply what could happen.

That would make it indistinguishable from possibility.

Potential is what a participant is positioned to make of what could happen.

The distinction is small, but consequential.

A possibility belongs to the field.

A potential belongs to participation.

Actualisation belongs to becoming.

And becoming transforms the field.

Perhaps we can now see why the Hallidayan distinction that started us on this path was so suggestive.

Modalisation gives us probability: an assessment of how likely an occurrence is.

Modulation gives us readiness: an assessment of a participant's inclination or ability.

Our conceptual distinction has taken these linguistic resources in a different direction.

Possibility asks about the openness of the future.

Potential asks about readiness for participation in that future.

Neither tells us what will actually happen.

That requires becoming.

And becoming is not simply the movement from possible to actual.

It is the process through which actualisation transforms the relations that determine what can become possible next.

So perhaps our three concepts can now be put very simply:

Possibility is what a world leaves open.

Potential is what a participant can take up.

Becoming is what happens when the two enter into a transformative relation.

And then something rather beautiful follows.

The participant does not simply enter an already existing world of possibilities.

By taking up a possibility, the participant helps change the world of possibilities itself.

The swimmer enters the water.

The musician plays the note.

The organism responds to its environment.

The thinker makes a new distinction.

The action is not merely an event within the world.

It can become a difference to the world.

And so the circle continues:

possibility → participation → becoming → new possibility.

Perhaps, then, potential is not a reservoir of unrealised futures.

It is the readiness through which a participant can participate in the becoming of a world.

And possibility is not a collection of futures waiting to be selected.

It is the openness generated by the relations already in play.

When potential meets possibility, neither simply becomes the other.

Something happens between them.

And what happens may change what is possible next.

That, perhaps, is where becoming truly begins.