20 August 2025

1 Seeing Meaning in the World

1 The World as Already Meaningful

What does it mean to see?

We often imagine perception as passive: light hits the eye, sound strikes the ear, and the world “appears” to us, ready-made. Meaning, on this view, is something we add—through language, through memory, through thought.

But what if that’s backward?

What if meaning is not something we impose, but something already active in perception itself?

There Is No Unconstrued World

In the ontology we are developing, reality does not lie dormant, waiting to be discovered. It is not made of objects waiting to be named. It is made of meaning—construed difference, patterned relation.

There is no world “out there” separate from how we encounter it. What we call “the world” is already organised as experience. We do not first see and then interpret; we interpret in the seeing.

We do not perceive a meaningless tree and then assign it significance. We perceive it as a tree. Its meaning is folded into its form—its affordances, its recognisability, its placement in a world of relations.

To see is to construe.

Instance and Potential Are Perspectives

This leads us to two foundational perspectives in our model: instance and potential.

  • An instance is not a thing—it is a perspective on meaning. It is a construed event: something that has taken form within a field of possibility.

  • Potential is not a vague cloud of options. It is a structured theory of instances—a way of understanding what could happen, what kinds of events are possible, and what would count as meaningful.

Both are perspectives—not separate realities, but ways of construing experience.

We do not perceive isolated particulars and then build potential out of them. Nor do we perceive abstract potential and then slot in examples. These two perspectives arise together, in and through the act of meaning.

Seeing Is Already Meaning

To see the sky darken is to see the potential for rain.

To hear a voice rise in pitch is to hear the potential for anger, or excitement, or question.

To read a sentence is to traverse a series of construed instances—each shaped by a system of linguistic potential.

In each case, we do not begin with meaningless stimuli. We begin with meaningful relations. Perception, in this ontology, is not a raw input channel. It is already structured by systems of potential that we, as meaning-makers, participate in.

Consciousness Is Not Outside This Process

This does not mean that consciousness is added on top of the physical. It means that consciousness is the site where relation is construed. It is the perspectival cut from potential to instance—the lived differentiation of meaning.

And this is true not only in language or thought, but in perception itself.

The seeing of a trace in a cloud chamber is not the observation of a thing. It is the construal of a pattern as meaningful—an instance construed within the potential of a theoretical system.

The same is true when we see a gesture, or hear a birdcall, or read a page. Meaning is already there, because it is how the world appears to us.

We are not spectators in a mute cosmos.
We are participants in a meaningful unfolding.

Looking Ahead

In the next post, we will deepen this insight by turning to theorising itself. How do we move from instances to potential? How do linguists, physicists, or everyday observers build theories that organise what they see?

2. Potential as Theory of Instance

In the last post, we saw that meaning is not something added to perception. Perception itself is already meaningful—already construed. We do not first encounter an unconstrued world and then interpret it. We encounter the world as already patterned, already relational.

Now we take the next step:

If an instance is a perspective on meaning—something construed within experience—then what is potential?

Potential Is Not a Possibility Space

In many fields, potential is treated as a kind of “possibility space”—an open realm from which instances can be selected. But this is too vague. It misses the fundamental point:

Potential is the theory of instances.

It is not raw possibility, but structured possibility.

When a physicist theorises a quantum field, or a linguist theorises a system of mood or transitivity, they are not describing a reality behind the scenes. They are construing a structured set of possibilities—a theory of what kinds of instances can occur, and under what constraints.

This is what we mean by potential.

It is not separate from instance—it is the perspectival complement to it.

The Linguist’s Theory: From Text to System

Consider the linguist. They read texts, observe conversations, attend to the actual flow of language. These are instances—construed experiences, shaped by and shaping meaning.

From these, they construct a system: an organised theory of meaning potential. In Systemic Functional Linguistics, this takes the form of system networks: structured options from which instances can be selected under contextual constraints.

The system is not separate from language-in-use.
It is language construed from a different perspective—as the potential for meaning, rather than its realisation.

This is the logic of ergativity in Halliday’s model:
The system is the Range of a relational process.
The instance is the Medium through which it unfolds.

The Physicist’s Theory: From Events to Fields

Now consider the physicist. They observe traces on a detector, shifts in field strength, bursts of radiation. These too are instances—construed events, not self-evident facts.

From these, the physicist constructs a theory: a wavefunction, a field equation, a model of interaction.

This is not a literal description of what is “really there”.
It is a theory of instances—a structured account of the potential from which those events were construed.

The wavefunction is not a thing.
It is a theoretical system—a potential from which events are construed as meaningful.

The physicist, like the linguist, is theorising:
Creating a grammar of potential based on meaningful instances.

Potential Emerges Through Construal

So potential is not prior to instance.
It does not float in the background, waiting to be discovered.

Instead, it emerges through theorising.
Through the ongoing construal of patterns in experience.
Through the recursive move from what happens to what could happen.

It is through this process that meaning becomes structured—not imposed from outside, but articulated from within.

We don’t find systems—we build them.
But we build them with the world, not against it.

Systems Are Semiotic

In both cases—linguistic and physical—the system is a semiotic artefact. It is made of meaning. It is a structured set of options, shaped by prior instances, open to future variation.

The weather theorises climate.
A text theorises language.
A measurement theorises a field.

And in each case, it is through conscious construal that potential emerges.
Not because consciousness causes the world, but because meaning requires a perspective—and consciousness is the site of that perspectival cut.

Looking Ahead

In the next post, we turn to the dynamic process that links instance and potential: unfolding. We’ll ask:

  • What does it mean to say that an instance unfolds?

  • How does each event perturb the system that made it possible?

  • And what does this reveal about the living tension between theory and experience?

3 Unfolding as Perturbation of Potential

We’ve seen that instance is not a thing, but a perspective: a construed relation, shaped within consciousness.
We’ve seen that potential is its perspectival complement: the theory of instances, structured as a system of meaning.

Now we take the next step:

What happens when an instance unfolds?

What does it do to the system from which it was construed?

Meaning Is Not Static

In classical models of knowledge, instances are drawn from a fixed possibility space—like pulling balls from a bin, or words from a dictionary.

But in a relational ontology, meaning is not a storehouse of possibilities.
It is a structured system in motion.

Every instance, once construed, feeds back into the system.
It changes what can come next.
It perturbs the potential from which it was drawn.

The Weather and the Climate

Let’s begin with weather.

  • Weather is the instance: a day of rain, a cold snap, a heatwave.

  • Climate is the system: the long-term pattern that structures what kinds of weather are possible.

But climate is not just a backdrop.
It evolves—slowly but continuously—through the unfolding of its instances.

Each weather event perturbs the system:
Alters distributions, shifts baselines, opens or closes future pathways.

The instance is not “separate” from the potential.
It updates it.

Text and System in Language

In language, the parallel is direct.

  • A text is an instance of the language system.

  • But as it unfolds—through logogenesis—it feeds back into that system.

Each utterance shifts the probabilities of what can follow.

Each text reshapes the system’s potential—by reinforcing, innovating, extending, or reconfiguring its constraints.

This is why Halliday says:

“The system is continually being changed by its own output.”

This is not metaphor. It is how meaning unfolds.

Quantum Events and Wavefunction

In quantum theory, a measurement yields an instance—a detectable event.

But this event perturbs the system it came from.
It alters the wavefunction: the theory of potential from which that event was selected.

This is known as wavefunction evolution—but from our perspective, it’s simply the feedback from instance to potential.

The system is not independent of its instances.
It is shaped by them—constrained, updated, re-theorised.

This is the relational loop at the heart of unfolding.

Systems Are Built From History

A system of potential is not eternal. It is historical.

It is shaped by past instances—
And open to future ones.

Meaning is not made once and for all.
It is made and remade with each unfolding.

This is what gives relational ontology its distinctive logic:

  • Meaning does not live in the system alone.

  • Nor in the instance alone.

  • It lives in the tension between them—
    the recursive loop in which each instance both draws from and reshapes the field of potential.

The System Changes Because We Are in It

And this is true not just in theory, but in life.

  • A conversation changes the system of understanding between us.

  • A decision alters what can happen next.

  • A text changes the language it belongs to.

Because we are participants—not outsiders.

And because meaning is not a map of the world,
but the world becoming patterned through our participation.

Looking Ahead

In the next post, we turn to this participatory dimension more directly.
We ask: What role does the knower play?

If every instance is a cut in the field of potential,
what determines where the cut is made?

How is the world construed through us?

4 Theorising as Participatory Construal

We’ve seen that:

  • Instance is construed as an event.

  • Potential is construed as a system: a theory of possible instances.

  • The unfolding of an instance perturbs the system—it feeds back and reshapes what can follow.

Now we ask:

Who or what does the construing?

What is the nature of the knower in a relational ontology?

And what do we mean when we say that theorising is a kind of participation?

Construal Is Always by Someone

Meaning does not float free.
It does not arise in a vacuum.

Every meaning is construed—by some perspective, somewhere.

When we say "this is an instance of that," we are not stating a fact about the world.
We are enacting a relation from within it.

This is why potential and instance are not ontologically separate.
They are perspectival complements.

They come into being within the act of construal.

Theorising Is Structured Participation

So what is theorising?

Theorising is when consciousness construes a system from a history of instances.

It is not just seeing a tree, or hearing a sentence.
It is seeing patterns in trees, or construing the system that makes a sentence possible.

It is system-making:
An active, reflexive process of interpreting the world as structured possibility.

We do it in all domains:

  • The physicist construes a wavefunction from experimental traces.

  • The linguist construes a system network from texts.

  • The climatologist construes a climate model from weather data.

Each is a construal of a potential from a field of instances.

Participation in What?

But what is this act participating in?

It participates in the world’s own patterning.

In a relational ontology, meaning does not pre-exist construal.
It emerges as a relation is made—between system and instance, between knower and known.

So when a physicist constructs a theory of particles, or a speaker utters a clause, they are not merely describing a world.
They are taking part in its unfolding.

They are contributing a new construal, and thus a new perturbation, into the system of potential.

System–&–Process

Halliday’s insight that “system” is shorthand for system–&–process becomes crucial here.

  • “System” is the structured potential—what can be meant.

  • “Process” is the unfolding of meaning—what is meant, here and now.

Together, they form a single semiotic loop.

And the speaker (or theorist, or observer) is not outside that loop.

They are both the medium and the agent through which system becomes instance, and instance feeds back into system.

Theorising Is Meaning-Making with Memory

To theorise is not just to describe what is.
It is to draw a structured potential from what has been.

It is to hold in memory a field of instances, and to construe them as system.

That construal then orients future meaning-making.

Theory is the potential of what might be, drawn from the memory of what has been.

And because we are always inside the process,
theorising is not neutral.

It is situated, reflexive, ethical.

Meaning Is Always Situated

This is why every construal is shaped by perspective:

  • By the systems we inherit.

  • By the histories we carry.

  • By the categories we use to orient the field.

No theory is “from nowhere.”
But every theory is an attempt to orient somewhere—to make a difference that matters.

Theorising is how we join the unfolding:
Not to control it, but to pattern it meaningfully.

Looking Ahead

In the next post, we’ll explore this meaning-making from another angle:

How does a new instance emerge—not just from a system,
but from within a process that is already unfolding?

We turn now to the dynamics of logogenesis—and to the continuous shaping of meaning as it moves through time.

5 Meaning in Motion – The Dynamics of Logogenesis

We’ve seen that meaning arises through perspective:

construed by consciousness, situated in context, and patterned over time.

Now we ask:

How does meaning unfold dynamically, instance by instance?

This process is known as logogenesis:
the generation of meaning through time.

Meaning Is Not Given All at Once

Meaning does not arrive fully formed.

It unfolds step by step—clause by clause, gesture by gesture, frame by frame.

In language, we can’t utter a whole text at once.

Instead, meaning is accumulated and differentiated in motion.

And as it unfolds, each new instance alters what can come next.

Logogenesis Is Instantiation in Time

Halliday’s term logogenesis captures this beautifully:

  • Genesis: the coming-into-being.

  • Logos: meaning, word, patterned sense.

Logogenesis is the becoming of meaning over time.

Each clause is an instantiation:
a selection from the system, actualised here and now.

And each selection reshapes the potential for what can follow.

Instance Changes Potential

This is key.

Meaning-making is not just from system to instance.

It is also from instance back to system.

  • In language, each utterance perturbs the ongoing discourse potential.

  • In physics, each measurement reshapes the evolving wavefunction.

  • In weather, each atmospheric shift feeds back into the probabilities of the climate system.

The system is not static.
It evolves as instances accumulate.

Meaning Is Always Situated in Process

This means that the present is always shaped by the past:

  • What I can say now depends on what I just said.

  • What I can mean now depends on what’s already been construed.

And yet, the system is never exhausted:

  • Potential is always held open.

  • New differentiations are always possible.

This is the dynamic tension of meaning-in-motion.

Meaning Is Directional

Because logogenesis unfolds through time, it is not symmetrical.

Meaning moves forward.

But not arbitrarily.

Each choice constrains what comes next, and opens up new possibilities.

This is not unlike musical improvisation:

  • A phrase establishes a key.

  • Each note constrains and suggests the next.

  • The shape of the whole emerges as it moves.

System Is Re-shaped by Use

This feedback loop is not merely individual.

Over time, repeated patterns reshape the system itself:

  • In language, usage changes grammar.

  • In science, data alters theory.

  • In culture, practice transforms values.

This is the evolutionary dimension of meaning.

Meaning is not just made—it is remade through use.

Logogenesis in All Systems

Though coined in linguistics, logogenesis applies wherever systems of meaning unfold:

  • A narrative takes shape over its telling.

  • A scientific theory develops through experimentation.

  • A cultural form evolves through performance.

Each is an instance-in-motion—
A lived traversal of structured potential.

Looking Ahead

We’ve seen how meaning unfolds in time, reshaping potential as it moves.

In our final post, we’ll bring together all these insights:

What does it mean to live in a universe where meaning is not a substance, but a patterned unfolding?

Where every act of construal is a way of participating in the world’s becoming?

6. Living the World as Meaning

We’ve followed a path from the construal of experience to the unfolding of meaning over time.
We’ve seen how meaning is not a layer added onto the world, but the world as construed—
always perspectival, always situated, always in motion.

Now we ask:

What does it mean to live in such a world?

The World Is Not Made of Things

It is made of meaning.
Not inert atoms or brute facts,
but construed relation,
held open by perspective
and patterned by system.

We do not live in a world of meaning—

We live as meaning-in-motion.

To Perceive Is to Participate

Every act of seeing, hearing, touching, speaking—
is a construal.
A cut in potential.
A moment of oriented difference.

To be alive is to differentiate the world
according to a history of meaning
and a system of possibility.

This is not passive observation.

It is living participation in the unfolding of relation.

Meaning Is Not Found, But Brought Forth

We don’t discover pre-existing meanings
waiting in objects.

We bring forth meaning
in the act of construal—
in relation, not isolation.

To live, then, is to orient ourselves
within a system of potential
and instantiate it meaningfully
in each moment.

The Human as Meaning-Maker

We are not detached observers.

We are nodes in a web of unfolding:
patterned by culture,
inflected by history,
structured by system.

Our capacity to mean
is our capacity to participate—
to bring forth new instances
from potential.

We are agents of construal,
participants in logogenesis,
living meaning forward.

Ethics Follows Meaning

If the world is meaning,
then every construal matters.

Every differentiation is an act—
not just cognitive, but ethical.

To ignore, distort, or deny meaning
is not a failure of knowledge alone—
it is a rupture in the unfolding of relation.

To live well is to live attentively:
to mean with care,
to orient with humility,
to construe with openness.

Being as Construal

We began with perception.
We end with being.

To be is not merely to exist.
It is to participate
in the ongoing construal
of a world that is not fixed,
but unfolding.

We live the world
as meaning in motion.

And that is not a metaphor.
It is the very grammar
of our becoming.

Coda: Where Meaning Leads

This is the heart of a relational ontology:

  • Meaning is not inside the head.

  • It is the form of the world as construed.

  • Reality is not what we step into—
    it is what we step through,
    shaping and shaped by every differentiation we make.

Seeing meaning in the world is not a trick of perception.
It is the ground of perception itself.
It is what life is.

Reflection: The Art of Participating in Meaning

We began with a simple shift in perspective:
That meaning is not added to the world—
It is what the world is,
as construed through participation.

But such a shift changes everything.

It transforms perception into relation,
knowing into orientation,
and living into a recursive dance
of construal and becoming.

We do not stand apart from the world.
We are its unfolding—
its differentiation, its reflexivity, its grammar in motion.

To see meaning in the world
is to realise that meaning is not something we look for,
but something we bring forth
in every moment of relation.

And this seeing is not neutral.
It invites a way of living.

Living the Construal

If every act of perception is a construal,
then every moment is an opportunity for care.
For attentiveness.
For responsibility.

The way we construe shapes
what is possible next.
Our interpretations constrain the unfolding—
they open some paths and close others.

This means that to live meaningfully
is to live ethically.
Not in abstraction, but in the fine-grained texture
of how we relate, attend, speak, and interpret.

The Gift of Perspective

A relational world is not flat.
It is richly structured—
by system, by context, by history.

What we see depends on where we stand.
And how we stand can change.

This gives rise to perspective—
not as distortion, but as condition.

To know that we see through perspective
is not a failure of objectivity.
It is the beginning of wisdom.

The Invitation

This series was never just about ideas.
It was an invitation:

  • To participate differently.

  • To attend more deeply.

  • To live meaningfully within the world we help construe.

The world is not waiting to be known.
It is unfolding, through our knowing.

What will we make possible
with the way we mean?

Epilogue: The Journey Continues

We began this series with a question:
How do we see meaning in the world?

Along the way, we discovered that meaning is not a hidden treasure,
waiting to be uncovered beneath the surface,
but the very fabric of reality as it unfolds—
a dynamic, perspectival, relational process.

Meaning arises in the interplay of potential and instance,
in the dance of construal and becoming.

We are not passive spectators of this dance,
but active participants—
creators of meaning, shapers of the unfolding world.

This insight carries profound implications:

  • For how we understand knowledge,

  • For how we live with others,

  • And for how we care for the world itself.

As we close this chapter, the journey is far from over.
The invitation remains open:

To live as meaning in motion,
to attend to the unfolding,
and to participate with openness and care.

Because the universe is not just happening to us.
It is happening through us.

And the meaning we make—
the meanings we live—
are the very grammar of our becoming.

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