Fields of Meaning: Scientific Modelling Through a Relational Lens

1 What Is a Model?: From Compression to Construal

Scientific models are often thought of as simplified representations—“maps” or “pictures”—of reality, tools that help us navigate complexity by reducing it to manageable form. But within a relational ontology grounded in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and informed by Edelman’s Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS), models can be understood far more profoundly: not as static mirrors, but as dynamic instances of meaning potential that both compress and construe the unfolding coherence of phenomena.

Compression as Coherence

At their core, models are compressions of relational processes and fields of unfolding. Just as particles emerge as compressed patterns within continuous fields, models condense vast webs of interaction and variation into structured, accessible forms. This compression is not arbitrary but is shaped by coherence: the patterned relations that hold together phenomena across dimensions of space, time, and causality. Models extract and amplify these coherences, enabling observers to grasp and work with them.

Construal as Meaning-Making

But compression alone is not modelling. For a model to function as a semiotic system—one that is meaningful and usable—it must be construed by conscious agents within communities of practice. This construal draws on value systems, purpose, and shared conventions to interpret the compressed patterns as meaningful configurations, whether numerical, visual, conceptual, or linguistic.

Models as Semiotic Instances

This perspective reframes models from static “pictures” to semiotic instances: dynamic, interpretable construals arising from material coherence but transcending mere physicality. Models are not simply “out there” but are enacted through the interaction of observer, community, and the phenomena under study. They instantiate meaning potentials shaped by cultural, cognitive, and methodological systems.

Implications

Understanding models as compressed and construed relational processes invites a new epistemology: one that foregrounds the role of the observer, the semiotic system, and the collective meaning potential from which models emerge. It also opens paths to explore how models evolve, how they relate across domains, and how they mediate the unfolding of scientific knowledge.

2 The Model in Practice: Interactions, Limits, and the Ecology of Knowledge

Building on our understanding of models as compressions and semiotic construals, we now turn to the practical dimensions of modelling in science and knowledge-making. How do models operate within fields of interaction? What are their limits? And how do they participate in the broader ecology of knowledge?

Models as Interactional Processes

Models are not isolated artefacts; they emerge, evolve, and function through ongoing interactions among observers, instruments, data, and phenomena. Each iteration—whether a mathematical formula, a conceptual framework, or a computational simulation—is shaped by this relational interplay. Models adapt to new observations, refine predictions, and respond to challenges, reflecting the dynamic and situated nature of knowledge.

Limits and Boundary Conditions

Every model embodies constraints—boundary conditions that define its domain of applicability and the assumptions it carries. These limits are essential: they acknowledge that models compress complex realities and that no model can capture every detail. Recognising these boundaries prevents the conflation of second-order semiotic reality (the model) with first-order material reality (the processes being modelled), and invites continual critical engagement and revision.

The Ecology of Models

Models coexist within an ecology of knowledge, interacting with other models, theories, and practices across disciplines. This ecology is not hierarchical but networked, with models influencing and transforming one another. Interdisciplinary dialogues reveal complementarities and tensions, highlighting how models mediate meaning across contexts.

The Role of Meaning and Value

As semiotic construals, models also carry meaning potentials that extend beyond empirical fit. They embody values, priorities, and interpretive frameworks that influence how phenomena are understood and acted upon. Awareness of these dimensions enriches the practice of modelling, situating it within human purposes and cultural contexts.

Towards Reflexive Modelling

Informed by a relational ontology, reflexive modelling acknowledges the mutual shaping of models and observers. It encourages openness to alternative perspectives, iterative refinement, and the embracing of complexity without succumbing to reductionism.

3 Compression and Coherence: Modelling as Meaning-Making

Having explored models as relational construals and situated practices, we now turn to the underlying dynamics that allow models to function at all: compression and coherence. In the relational ontology we are developing, these are not just technical or cognitive processes — they are meaning-making activities, unfolding within and across fields of potential.

Compression: From Process to Pattern

To model is to compress unfolding phenomena — to abstract patterns from complex processes. This is not simplification for its own sake, but a necessary condition of intelligibility. Just as language compresses experience into meaning, models compress relational unfoldings into selective representations. A model, then, is not a mirror of reality, but an enactment of coherence within constraint.

Compression does not negate complexity; it manages it. By selecting what differences make a difference, models allow us to interact meaningfully with the world — to anticipate, to question, to interpret. But every act of compression implies exclusions: unmodelled variables, unacknowledged assumptions, unseen interactions.

Coherence: Holding Meaning Together

If compression makes a model functionally possible, coherence makes it meaningful. A model must hold together across its internal structure and its external deployments. It must cohere with other models, with empirical observations, and with the broader systems of knowledge in which it operates.

Coherence is not reducible to consistency or predictive success. In a relational ontology, coherence is the resonance of a model within a field of meaning — its capacity to stabilise intelligibility across instances. A model coheres when it enables understanding, links phenomena, and supports purposeful action, even if it is partial or provisional.

The Model as Semiotic Instance

From this perspective, each model is an instance of meaning — not a derivation from reality, but an actualisation of meaning potential in a particular relational configuration. It is a semiotic act, grounded in material processes but structured by symbolic systems. This holds whether the model is a graph, a mathematical expression, a verbal explanation, or a simulation: all are instances of construal.

This view also dissolves the divide between scientific and everyday models. The child’s mental model of gravity, the engineer’s stress diagram, and the physicist’s field equations are all compressions of potential into instance, meaningful because they resonate within their contexts.

A Modelling Ethic

If models are acts of meaning, they carry responsibility. We must attend not only to how well a model works, but also to what it foregrounds, what it hides, whom it serves, and how it might evolve. Modelling, then, is not just a methodological activity — it is an ethical and ontological one.

Reflective Coda — Modelling as Construal, Relation, and Responsibility

Throughout this trilogy, we have re-examined scientific modelling through the lens of relational ontology: not as a search for ultimate reality, but as a patterned unfolding of meaning. Models, in this view, do not depict things-in-themselves but instantiate relational coherences — selective construals of experience within specific fields of potential.

We began by reframing models not as mirrors of reality, but as relational construals: semiotic instances that emerge from the activation of social and cognitive potentials. These construals are not arbitrary. They compress patterned regularities across processes, stabilising meaning within a shared context of interpretation.

We then examined the situated practices through which models are produced and refined — not as neutral activities, but as forms of social semiosis shaped by tools, traditions, constraints, and purposes. The scientist does not merely extract truth from the world but configures meaningful relations within it. Modelling, like all meaning-making, is a material and symbolic process.

Finally, we turned to compression and coherence as fundamental operations in modelling. Compression renders complexity tractable; coherence holds meaning together across time, context, and application. Modelling is thus always perspectival: it selects, relates, omits, and reframes. Its power lies not in its completeness, but in its meaningful partiality.

This relational approach does not weaken the epistemic power of science — it situates it. By understanding models as semiotic acts within unfolding systems, we gain a clearer view of both their capacity and their limits. We can ask not just whether a model works, but how and why it means what it does, for whom, and with what consequences.

The implications are both theoretical and ethical. To model is to construe. And to construe is to take a stance within a world of unfolding relations.

Beyond the Particle: Matter, Meaning, and Relational Physics

1 From Fields to Particles — Unfolding and the Appearance of Discreteness

In the traditional ontology of physics, particles are understood as fundamental entities—discrete units of matter and energy, each with defined properties and behaviours. But when viewed through the lens of our relational ontology, this framework is upended. The ontology we’ve developed does not begin with things. It begins with unfolding processes, with fields of potential that give rise to instances of coherence. In this view, what we call a “particle” is not a basic building block, but a compressed pattern—a local coherence within a field of unfolding.

Just as language users select features from a meaning potential to instantiate a clause, so too do physical processes instantiate coherent patterns from physical potentials. A particle is not “there” until it emerges as a stable instantiation within a wider network of relational constraints. Its apparent discreteness is an effect, not a premise.

Fields as Meaning Potentials

The Standard Model of particle physics is built on the notion of fields. Each particle is associated with a quantum field that permeates space. What we observe as a particle is an excitation of the corresponding field—an instance of potential becoming actual. This fits naturally within the relational ontology:

• A field is a structured potential—like a system network in SFL.

• A particle is an instance of that potential, actualised in unfolding processes.

• The stability of a particle is the resonance of that instantiation across time—its recursive compatibility with the wider field relations.

Importantly, there are no isolated “things”. The ontology recognises only relational patterns—fields as structured possibilities, and particles as coherent instantiations that endure (however briefly) in the unfolding.

Compression and Coherence

When a pattern of unfolding compresses into a coherent configuration—localised, stable, and recurrent—we name it a particle. This compression is not imposed from the outside, nor does it involve a hidden substance underneath; rather, it is a self-organising dynamic. Much like how a melody takes shape from the interplay of musical values, a particle arises as a local coherence in a relational field.

In this view, mass, charge, and spin are not intrinsic properties, but features of the coherence—ways of modelling the nature of the instantiation and its interaction with other fields. This has profound consequences:

• Mass is not a substance, but a measure of how strongly the coherence couples to the unfolding gravitational potential.

• Charge is a pattern of relational interaction within the electroweak potential.

• Spin is a topological feature of the field's unfolding around the instantiation.

Each of these can be modelled not as intrinsic traits, but as relational qualifications of a compressed field instance.

From Discreteness to Disposition

This model helps us reframe a longstanding philosophical tension: how do continuous fields give rise to discrete particles?

In the relational ontology, this isn’t a metaphysical mystery. Discreteness is a construal—a categorisation of recurrent instantiations. We treat a stable field compression as an individual for the purposes of scientific modelling, but this does not mean it is a self-sufficient entity.

We no longer need to ask “What is a particle made of?” but rather:

How does a particle instantiate relational coherence from a field of potential?

This subtle shift has major implications for how we understand matter, interaction, and the role of modelling itself. It repositions physics not as a catalogue of fundamental things, but as a semiotic system that construes patterned instances of unfolding.

2 The Electron as a Relational Instance

In classical and even early quantum physics, the electron is treated as a particle: a negatively charged point mass orbiting a nucleus, scattering through space, or probabilistically “smeared” across a field. But from the perspective of our relational ontology, the electron is not a thing but an instance—a patterned coherence within a field of potential. To understand the electron, then, is to trace how its recognisable features emerge from and participate in relational unfolding.

Electron Potential and Instantiation

The electron field is a quantum field that spans what physics construes as space. In standard formulations, this field can be excited to produce a quantum—an electron—which interacts with other fields according to fixed rules. In the relational ontology, we reframe this process:

• The electron field is a structured potential, defined not by space but by its topology of interaction—the dimensions along which its potential can be instantiated in unfolding relation.

• An electron is a local coherence within this topology—an actualisation of the field that attains stability across a region of unfolding.

This instance is not separate from the field. It is the field, in a particular configuration—compressed, resonant, and qualified by its relational position. What we call the “electron” is a token of this coherence: something we recognise and semiotically distinguish across contexts.

Charge, Mass, and Spin as Relational Effects

In standard physics, the electron is said to have intrinsic properties: a negative electric charge, a specific mass, and a half-integer spin. In relational terms, these are not substances or hidden essences but relational qualifications:

• Charge arises from how the electron field couples to the electromagnetic field. The electron is negatively charged because its instantiation resonates in a specific way within the electroweak potential. The sign and magnitude are systemic features—values selected within the broader field grammar.

• Mass is not a thing the electron “has,” but a measure of its inertial relation—how tightly or loosely the electron’s instance coheres across the gravitational unfolding. In this view, mass is the degree to which unfolding is resisted, compressed into a consistent pattern of activation.

• Spin is a topological property of the field’s mode of unfolding. In the relational model, it indexes how the coherence circulates around itself in spacetime-like interactions. It is a pattern of relation, not a literal rotation.

These qualifications don’t define what an electron “is”—they describe how its instantiation relates to other fields and patterns. The electron is thus not a miniature marble with a charge label, but a knot in the relational fabric—a recurrent field pattern with certain dispositional effects.

Individuation and Generalisation

Every electron instantiation is singular—it unfolds in a particular context. But its recognisability comes from its participation in a collective potential. There is a meaning potential of “electronhood” within the field—a set of system features that are reliably selected and instantiated.

This duality maps cleanly onto the ontology’s clines:

• Individuation: Each electron instance is individuated—it is a local construal of a broader potential. But it is also generalisable, as it instantiates the same features across contexts.

• Instantiation: The field has a continuous potential. The electron is a point of actualisation—a construal that has coherence.

From this view, the idea of a “fundamental particle” gives way to a typology of stable relational instances. The electron is not a substance under the microscope, but a recurring semiotic event in the field grammar of physics.

3 From Particle Zoo to Relational Grammar

The Standard Model of particle physics has long been described as a “zoo” of particles—a crowded menagerie of quarks, leptons, bosons, and more, each with a catalogue of properties and interactions. But within the relational ontology we’ve been developing, these particles are not elementary things. They are instantiations of structured field potentials, and the so-called zoo is better understood as a grammar of unfolding relations.

Particles as Instantiations

In this framework, each “particle” is a coherence pattern—an instance of particular features selected from the potential of one or more fields. These patterns become salient in relation to other unfolding processes. Their apparent discreteness (mass, charge, spin, etc.) is not ontological but semiotic: they are recognisable tokens of patterned relational dynamics.

• A quark is not a part of matter but an instance of the quantum chromodynamic (QCD) potential, qualified by colour charge and confined within broader relational structures (like baryons).

• A boson is not a particle that “carries force” but an instance of a mediating potential—an unfolding relation that enables interaction between cohering field patterns.

What we call a “particle” is thus an abstraction from process—a construal that stabilises certain qualities of relational unfolding into repeatable roles.

The Grammar of Fields

Instead of treating particles as fundamental and fields as their backdrop, the relational model reverses the hierarchy:

• Fields are the structured meaning potentials of physical reality. They define dimensions along which relational patterns can be instantiated.

• Particles are instances—coherences actualised within these fields in a way that persists long enough to be individuated, named, and measured.

This allows us to treat the Standard Model not as a list of ingredients but as a semiotic grammar: a set of system networks whose features instantiate as relational configurations with particular consequences.

• The electroweak grammar governs how weak and electromagnetic interactions unfold and co-qualify their instances.

• The QCD grammar governs how colour charges interact, giving rise to confinement, gluon dynamics, and hadron formation.

• The mass grammar arises from how the Higgs field constrains the coherence of field configurations, rather than "giving mass" as an ontological act.

In this way, the Standard Model becomes a relational semiotic—a system of structured potentials from which recognisable, individuated patterns (particles) can be instantiated and organised.

From Measurement to Meaning

When physicists describe particles through their interactions—via cross-sections, decay channels, or collision signatures—they are tracing meaning instances: selections from a potential field system, rendered measurable through technology.

But just as meaning in language cannot be reduced to lexicogrammar, the coherence of particles cannot be reduced to numeric outputs. What’s measured is not a thing but a token of relation—an actualised point in a topologically unfolding system.

This reframes physics itself as a construal of meaning: not a discovery of fundamental building blocks, but a disciplined semiotic system for naming, measuring, and modelling unfolding relational processes.

Reflective Coda

Across this trilogy, we have sought to move beyond inherited metaphors that portray the world as made of things — discrete, independent particles in fixed space and time — and instead foreground an ontology of unfolding: where what we call “particles” are compressions of processual relations, and what we take as “matter” is the patterning of coherent interactions across fields of potential.

This shift matters. It reconfigures the very premises of physics, not by discarding its achievements, but by re-situating them in a broader account of meaning, instantiation, and consciousness. From this perspective, the so-called building blocks of nature are not ultimate entities but phase-bound construals — semiotic compressions of value, stability, and transformation within unfolding systems.

We have reframed quantum fields not as abstract mathematical surfaces but as relational potentials — structured landscapes of possibility, instantiated by processes and patterned by coherence. And we have traced how apparent “particles” emerge not as atoms of substance, but as the crossings and recursions of fields in relation.

This is not a new physics, but a new orientation toward physics — one that places observer, meaning, and relational process at the heart of the model. It asks not what things are, but how coherence unfolds, and in doing so, it clears ground for a more integrated view of science, semiosis, and self.

To go beyond the particle is not to deny its usefulness, but to recognise its place: not as the foundation of reality, but as a symbolic compression within the unfolding of relation.

A Relational Reimagining of Cosmology

1 Cosmology as Construal

In developing a relational ontology grounded in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and informed by theories of process, perception, and meaning, we have consistently challenged the assumption that science describes a mind-independent reality. Instead, we have treated scientific models as semiotic construals: disciplined, symbolic enactments of meaning within specific contexts of inquiry. Nowhere is this perspective more needed—and more revealing—than in the domain of cosmology.

Cosmology, on first encounter, appears to be the most objective of sciences. It concerns itself with the large-scale structure of the universe, the passage of cosmic time, and the origin and fate of everything. Yet these grand narratives emerge not from detached observation but from a deeply mediated process of semiotic work. Every model of the cosmos is a meaning instance within a historically evolving field of scientific meaning potential—a construal, not a mirror.

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The Universe as a Field of Potential, Not a Container of Things

Classical cosmology operates on a foundational metaphor: the universe as a vast container filled with matter, energy, and fields. But our relational ontology begins elsewhere. It views the universe not as a container but as a field of unfolding processes, each related to others through coherence, resonance, and instantiation. Space is not a backdrop, but a topology of relations. Time is not a separate dimension, but the axis along which processes unfold.

From this view, cosmology is not the description of an objective universe out there, but the attempt to instantiate semiotic coherence across the relational fields that unfold around us and within us.

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From Observation to Meaning Instance

Scientific cosmology is built on observation—but observation is always mediated. Photons arriving from distant stars are captured, filtered, interpreted, and modelled. What we call “data” is not raw input but already-semiotic material. The “cosmic microwave background” is not a discovered thing but a construed field: a patterned construal that emerges through recursive meaning-making between instrumentation, theory, and interpretation.

To claim, then, that we “know” the age of the universe or the structure of space-time is to confuse semiotic model with material process. This does not reduce the validity of cosmological inquiry—it sharpens it. The task is not to describe some imagined reality beyond construal — a metaphysical fiction — but to understand how meaning is instantiated across systems as they unfold in relation.

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A Semiotic Ecology of Models

Models like the Big Bang, cosmic inflation, dark matter, and dark energy are not isolated conjectures but part of a semiotic ecology. Each draws on shared systems of meaning: mathematics, physics, observational technologies, philosophical assumptions. Each brings certain aspects of the cosmos into focus while rendering others backgrounded or unmodellable.

Our relational ontology invites us to treat these models not as approximations of truth but as expressions of individuation within the scientific community. They are ways of constraining potential into instance, shaped by material affordances, social imperatives, and the ongoing evolution of meaning.

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Looking Ahead

In the posts that follow, we will revisit some of cosmology’s most profound constructs—black holes, the Big Bang, and cosmic expansion—through this relational lens. We will ask not what they are, but how they instantiate across relational fields. We will treat them not as objects of knowledge, but as meaningful compressions of unfolding processes, whose very intelligibility depends on the semiotic systems in which they are embedded.

Cosmology, then, is not the story of what the universe is. It is the story of how we, as semiotic beings embedded in unfolding processes, make meaning at the outermost edges of what we can construe.

2 Black Holes and the Collapse of Construal

In the previous post, we proposed a reframing of cosmology as a semiotic enterprise: not a mirror of an objective cosmos, but a set of disciplined construals that instantiate meaning from potential. In this frame, cosmological constructs like black holes must be understood not as fixed entities “out there” in a pre-given universe, but as meaning instances that compress and coordinate fields of experience within the scientific community. Few cosmological construals test this perspective more profoundly than the black hole.

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From Prediction to Construal

Black holes entered scientific discourse not as observations but as mathematical inferences—solutions to the equations of general relativity under extreme conditions. Their subsequent evolution, from speculative singularities to central objects in astrophysics, illustrates the semiotic power of modelling. The black hole is not a thing; it is a boundary condition of a model—a projection of relational stress within an unfolding field.

From a relational-ontological perspective, the black hole instantiates the collapse of construal: it marks the limit at which the semiotic systems used to model gravitational interaction can no longer produce coherent symbolic interpretation. The breakdown of spacetime geometry at the singularity is not a feature of the material cosmos but a signal that the model’s meaning potential has reached its outer bound.

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Event Horizon as Semiotic Boundary

The event horizon—often described as the boundary beyond which nothing can escape—is better understood as a boundary of construal. It marks the point beyond which observational processes can no longer instantiate meaning in the classical sense. What happens beyond the horizon cannot be modelled by light-based observations, and thus resists integration into the shared meaning potential of our scientific systems.

In this sense, black holes don’t just curve geodesics; they curve the field of construal itself, pulling semiotic coherence toward a singular limit. They instantiate relational compression so extreme that time, space, mass, and even process lose their conventional semantic coherence.

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The Semiotics of Collapse

At its heart, the black hole is a semiotic paradox: it is the most predicted and indirectly observed entity in astrophysics, yet it fundamentally resists direct construal. The tension between prediction and observability forces the scientific community to instantiate coherence across models—linking gravitational lensing, accretion disk radiation, and gravitational wave signatures into a shared constellation of meaning.

This isn’t error; it’s how science functions as a semiotic ecology. The black hole emerges not as an ontological substance but as an effect of coordinated construal across multiple, interacting systems of interpretation.

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Meaning Beyond the Horizon

So what lies beyond the black hole’s horizon? From our relational perspective, the better question is: what does it mean to posit such a region? The singularity is not a place; it is a collapse of coherence, where potential meaning cannot be instantiated with our current systems.

Black holes thus reveal something fundamental about the ontology of science: that every field of inquiry has limits of construal, and that these limits are not failures but structural boundaries of meaning-making. The more extreme the compression of relational fields, the more radically our semiotic systems are tested—and perhaps transformed.

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A Space for New Construals

The continuing study of black holes—especially in relation to quantum mechanics and information theory—presses on the outermost edge of scientific meaning potential. It invites the development of new systems of construal: not merely extensions of general relativity or quantum theory, but novel architectures of meaning, able to hold together previously unconnected fields.

What we observe is not a collapse of reality, but a demand for deeper coherence. In this way, black holes are not just phenomena to be explained; they are generators of semiotic innovation, forcing us to rethink what it means to know.

3 Cosmological Expansion and the Scaling of Meaning

If black holes represent the collapse of construal—points at which semiotic coherence reaches a relational singularity—then cosmological expansion presents the opposite challenge: not compression, but scaling. The expanding universe does not rupture our models through intensity, but through scope. It asks how far meaning can extend before its coherence thins into abstraction.

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What Expands in Expansion?

Standard cosmology construes expansion as the stretching of spacetime itself: galaxies are not moving through space so much as space unfolding between them. From a relational ontology, this construal is already highly abstracted: it interprets redshift, background radiation, and spatial distribution through a semiotic system—not as reality itself, but as a way of coordinating observations across time and frame.

But what does “expansion” instantiate in a system that models reality as unfolding relations? Not a ballooning of substance, but a scaling of relational topology. The fabric of co-unfolding processes spreads, not as metric extension, but as the increasing separation of interactive potential.

In other words, expansion is not of a container (space), but of the relational field that coordinates processual interaction.

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Scaling Meaning Potentials

This scaling creates a unique semiotic challenge: how do we maintain coherent construal across increasing separation? How do we relate observations from early universe microwave background to current galactic structures without losing the meaning potential of either?

In the SFL-based framework, such work requires realising coherence across strata. In cosmology, coherence is realised across systemic models: from inflation theory to dark energy parametrisation to standard candles. Each instantiates meaning from a distinct set of potential, yet all are held together as instances of a single construal of unfolding.

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The Horizon Problem as Semiotic Discontinuity

The horizon problem, for example—why regions of the universe not in causal contact display similar properties—can be reframed not just as a physical puzzle, but as a semiotic inconsistency: a mismatch in the instantiation of coherence across a relational field.

Inflation theory attempts to resolve this by reconfiguring the unfolding itself. It introduces a new construal of early process, compressing relational proximity into a prior epoch of co-interaction. This shows how cosmology innovates not just by observing more, but by reshaping the field of meaning to restore semiotic consistency.

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Dark Energy and the Strain of Abstraction

The concept of dark energy represents a new form of semiotic strain. It is not observed directly; it is invoked to sustain coherence between the model and the observed acceleration of expansion. In relational terms, dark energy is a placeholder for a missing processual relation—an inferred dynamic necessary to uphold the model’s integrity across scale.

Like the singularity of a black hole, dark energy reveals the limits of current construal. It marks a region of potential that remains uninstantiated—a gap in meaning that propels the ongoing evolution of the semiotic system we call physics.

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Expansion as a Semiotic Pressure

Thus, cosmological expansion is not just a physical phenomenon; it is a semiotic pressure. It demands the coordination of increasingly disparate instances of observation into a shared meaning potential. The challenge is not just to explain more, but to maintain coherence across scale, to trace unfolding relations even as their proximity thins.

In this sense, the expanding universe becomes a metaphor for the task of knowledge itself: not to capture the whole in a single frame, but to sustain meaningful construal across diverse and widening perspectives.

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The Cosmos as Construal

In the relational ontology we are developing, the cosmos is not a container of things but a field of co-unfolding processes. Cosmology, then, is the attempt to instantiate coherence across that field—to construe unfolding at the limits of scale, time, and relation.

What expands is not space alone, but the field of semiotic engagement. And what science accomplishes is not the mapping of reality, but the organised construal of its unfolding.

Reflective Coda: Construal at the Edge of Everything

Across this trilogy, we have reframed three of cosmology’s most foundational concepts—black holes, the big bang, and expansion—not as brute physical realities, but as semiotic construals: patterned interpretations of how processes unfold and relate at different scales.

Each concept, in its own way, presses on the boundaries of our relational ontology:

• Black holes reveal the compression of meaning, the limits of construal where processual coherence breaks down under intensity.

• The big bang reframes origin not as a substance-based event, but as an inflection in the topology of unfolding: a convergence of potential and interaction whose reverberations persist in every instance of process.

• Cosmological expansion shows that what unfolds is not space as container, but relation as field. The challenge is not tracking material drift, but maintaining semiotic coherence across widening scales.

Together, these re-interpretations lead us to a radical insight: cosmology is not the study of a thing called ‘the universe’ but the organised construal of how relational processes unfold at scale.

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From Physics to Semiotics

This shift has significant consequences. What has long been treated as physics—the modelling of space, time, mass, energy—is here reunderstood as a semiotic system: a disciplined language for instantiating meaning from the field of observable process. What we call “laws of nature” are not directives from the cosmos but constraints on coherent construal within that system.

This is not relativism. It is not to deny the consistency of experience or the success of scientific modelling. It is to ground that consistency in relation, not in substance; in the logic of meaning-making, not the assumption of mind-independent objects.

The cosmos unfolds. Meaning construes. And what we call cosmology is their intersection.

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A New Vision of the Universe

To see the universe through this lens is not to diminish its majesty. On the contrary, it draws us more deeply into its logic. We are no longer outside observers looking at a universe. We are participants in a field of unfolding, whose own meaning potentials instantiate the construals by which the universe comes to mean.

In this view, the universe is not something we find, but something we unfold with—a field of meaning instantiated process by process, relation by relation, across the clines of time, individuation, and semiotic abstraction.

The universe is not a noun. It is a clause complex.

Curving the Geodesic: A Relational Reframe of Gravity

In developing a relational ontology informed by quantum theory, relativity, and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), we’ve been gradually reshaping how core physical concepts can be understood without defaulting to assumptions of absolute space, time, or substance. One of the most fruitful areas of this rethinking is gravity — particularly, the idea of a geodesic.

From Substance to Process

Standard models of general relativity describe gravity as the curvature of spacetime. Mass bends spacetime, and free-falling objects move along the resulting geodesics — paths of least resistance in a curved manifold. This model has tremendous predictive power. But it carries a metaphysical cost: it assumes spacetime exists independently of what unfolds within it, and that curvature is a property of a substance-like continuum.

In our relational ontology, process is primary. Space and time are not containers but dimensions of unfolding relational activity. Instead of assuming spacetime as an independent manifold, we ask: what relations are necessary to model the unfolding of processes as gravitational attraction?

The Geodesic as a Relational Path

From this perspective, the geodesic is not a path carved through a pre-existing medium, but a pattern in the unfolding of actualised relations — a trajectory determined by how potential is instantiated in proximity to mass. Mass centres are not ‘sources’ of curvature, but gravitational centres that organise unfolding.

This shift allows us to reinterpret phenomena like gravitational time dilation and spatial contraction not as distortions of spacetime, but as perspectival effects within the unfolding of processes. In short:

It is the geodesic that is curved — not spacetime.

This curvature reflects how processes actualise differently depending on their relational orientation to mass.

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Gravitational Time Dilation and Spatial Contraction

In general relativity, clocks near a massive object tick more slowly (time dilation), and spatial intervals contract in the radial direction. But what is the proportional relation between these effects?

This asymmetry is telling: the effects are related, but not inverse mirrors of each other. In our ontology, this makes sense. Time and space are not equivalent dimensions of a container; they are complementary dimensions of relational unfolding:

• Time tracks the ordering of instances within a process.

• Space tracks the relational spread of processes co-unfolding.

Thus, their relative modulation in a gravitational field is not a geometrical distortion but a differential actualisation of potential — slowed unfolding (dilated time) paired with tighter binding of process relations (contracted space).

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A Step Toward Light and Matter

This reframing of the geodesic prepares the ground for rethinking other key physical constructs: light, matter, particles, fields. If motion is not through space but across relational process configurations, then even the speed of light may be reinterpreted as a limit condition of actualisation, not of traversal.

In upcoming posts, we will explore how:

• Light functions as a boundary condition of process interaction,

• Particles emerge as compressed patterns in fields of unfolding,

• And how the Standard Model and chemical elements can be reconceived as semiotic systems instantiating potential meanings in the material order.

But first, it matters that we let go of the picture of masses ‘bending space’ and instead ask: what changes in how processes unfold?

From Physics to Meaning: How Our Relational Ontology Emerged

The relational ontology outlined previously did not emerge in abstraction. It was born from the meeting point of three powerful traditions: quantum mechanics, relativity, and systemic functional linguistics (SFL). Each offered a glimpse into a world not made of fixed objects, but of interdependent processes—where potential and relation take precedence over substance and certainty.

Quantum mechanics taught us that a system exists in a superposition of possibilities until an observation takes place. The act of observation does not reveal what is, but actualises what can be. This dynamic between potential and instance mirrors the cline of instantiation in SFL: a meaning potential is not passively awaiting discovery—it is actively instantiated through selection in context. 'Spin' is not a fixed property to be uncovered, but a meaning construed through interaction—an instance drawn from a probabilistic field of potential.

Relativity, meanwhile, replaced absolute space and time with relations among events. There is no universal frame of reference, only processes unfolding in interdependence. Here, too, we find an echo in our ontology: time is not a background container, but the dimension of unfolding; space, not a static grid, but a relation between processes. Reality is not a collection of things in space-time—it is the pattern of processes as space-time.

SFL, finally, offered a meta-semiotic framework for thinking about these issues. Meaning, it showed, is stratified and instantiated. The clause complex—not the noun—is primary: reality unfolds as interconnected processes, not as labels for pre-given entities. SFL also taught us to distinguish between the collective potential of a system, and the individuated subpotentials actualised through actual use—just as quantum systems, social fields, or human subjectivities unfold.

What results is a radical reframing. Rather than seeing physics as the study of a mind-independent world, we treat it as a meaning system—one that construes reality under strict discursive constraints. Reality itself is meaning: not a brute given, but a structure construed by consciousness from experience, using semiotic systems. Physics does not describe what is “really there”; it instantiates meanings, drawn from the potential of our most abstract and disciplined systems.

This is why the relational ontology must be built from the inside out—from meaning as construed, not from matter as presumed. And it is why any system—whether linguistic, scientific, or artificial—must be understood in terms of how it instantiates, organises, and potentially individuates its field of meaning.

Relational Ontology and the Quantum Field of Meaning

Introduction: Why Quantum Physics Needs a New Ontology

Quantum theory remains the most successful predictive framework in physics — yet its foundations remain unresolved. The famous puzzles of uncertainty, entanglement, and wavefunction collapse have led to decades of interpretive controversy, often centring on the nature of observation and the role of the observer.

At the heart of these puzzles is a deeper problem: the ontology assumed by most interpretations of quantum mechanics. Traditional physical theories often presume a world of objectively existing entities — particles and fields — with properties defined independently of any observer. In such a framework, it becomes paradoxical that an observer’s measurement seems to affect the outcome. How can an electron know whether it is being watched?

This series proposes a shift. Rather than trying to resolve these puzzles within an object-based ontology, we approach them from a different standpoint: a relational ontology grounded in systemic potential, actualisation, and the dynamics of observation. This is not a metaphysical sleight-of-hand or a poetic metaphor. It is a rigorous account of reality as constituted by relations, not things — and by instances, not substances.

Our framework draws on a conception of potential and instance developed through systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and informed by neurobiological theories of consciousness. But it is not restricted to semiotic systems. The same principles can be extended to the material domain — including quantum systems — when we treat potential as structured, and actualisation as relational.

In this series, we will revisit each of the classic interpretive challenges in quantum mechanics through this lens:

1. How should we understand uncertainty when position and momentum are not hidden properties, but mutually exclusive potentials?

2. How can entanglement be seen not as spooky action, but as the co-structured potential of a relational field?

3. What really happens in measurement, when the wavefunction collapses to an outcome?

4. What is the role of the observer, if not a detached subject or external cause?

5. And how does all this relate to the processes of individuation, where systems of potential are differentiated into distinct fields of meaning?

By reframing these questions in a relational ontology, we aim to show that the strangeness of quantum mechanics is not a sign of its incompleteness — but of a mismatch between its insights and the assumptions we bring to its interpretation. When we shift from a substance-based to a relation-based ontology, what once appeared as paradox may instead become intelligible — not as knowledge of what the world is, but as insight into how the world unfolds.

1 Uncertainty and the Structure of Potential

The uncertainty principle is often misinterpreted as a statement about human ignorance — as though the act of measurement disturbs an otherwise well-defined reality. But the principle is more radical than that. It does not say we can’t know both the position and the momentum of a particle. It says they cannot both be actualised in the same instance.

In classical physics, properties such as position and momentum are conceived as attributes that objects possess. But quantum theory reveals that such properties are not always co-instantiable. They belong to different structures of potential, which cannot be simultaneously realised. To actualise one is to foreclose the actualisation of the other.

This suggests that we need to rethink what is meant by a “property.” From the perspective of relational ontology, a property is not a pre-existing thing that a particle carries around with it, but an instance drawn from a system of potential — one that is defined relationally, not absolutely.

The Heisenberg uncertainty relation describes the limit of simultaneous actualisability, not of precision. The wavefunction doesn’t conceal hidden variables; it expresses a structured potential that unfolds into actualities only when particular observational conditions are met. The more tightly constrained the conditions for actualising position, the less coherent the structure remaining for momentum — and vice versa.

This coherence is not noise or deficiency. It is a sign of the system’s internal organisation. A system that can be actualised as a position-instance or as a momentum-instance is not ambiguous — it is structured. But its structure is such that only one actualisation can be instantiated at a time.

On this view, uncertainty is not a flaw in our measurements, nor a result of disturbance. It is a natural consequence of how relational potentials are structured and instantiated. Each observation is a moment of selection — not of selection among equally real outcomes, but of which relation is brought into being as an instance.

The quantum world, then, is not a world of definite objects obscured by probabilistic fog. It is a world of structured potential in which some paths of actualisation are mutually exclusive. Uncertainty is not a veil over reality — it is a window into its relational constitution.

2 Entanglement as Non-Separable Relational Potential

Entanglement is famously described as “spooky action at a distance,” a mysterious link that instantly connects particles across space. Yet this mystique largely arises from our object-centred ontology — the assumption that particles are independent things with intrinsic properties, capable of existing separately and locally.

From a relational ontology perspective, entanglement reveals the fundamental structure of quantum systems as relational fields of potential. The entangled particles do not possess separate, independent states; instead, they jointly instantiate a single, unified system of potential that cannot be decomposed into isolated parts.

When two particles become entangled, their possible states become co-structured — the potential outcomes for one particle are inseparably linked to those of the other. This co-structure forms a holistic field, a relational pattern that transcends classical separability.

Measurement of one particle actualises a particular relation in this field, collapsing the range of potential outcomes for both. Rather than sending a signal or influencing the distant particle, measurement transforms the relational structure as a whole, instantaneously updating what remains to be actualised.

This is not “action at a distance” but the unfolding of a relational potential that is fundamentally non-local and irreducible. The space between particles is not empty but filled with relational meaning and structured potential that cannot be split without losing essential coherence.

Entanglement challenges the classical notion that reality consists of discrete, independently existing entities. Instead, it points toward a deeper reality constituted by relational fields whose parts are defined only through their mutual relations and co-instantiation.

This relational view opens a new way of understanding the quantum world — not as a collection of isolated things but as an interconnected web of potential, where the unity of the system precedes and determines the instantiation of its parts.

3 Measurement as Actualisation, Not Discovery

Measurement in quantum mechanics is often portrayed as a passive act of revealing pre-existing properties of particles. However, this view quickly runs into paradoxes: if properties are not definite until measured, what does it mean to measure? And how can the observer influence what is observed?

The relational ontology reframes measurement not as discovery but as actualisation — the selective instantiation of one among many possible relations within a structured potential.

The quantum wavefunction describes a system’s potential: a structured set of possibilities that exist relationally, not as concrete realities. Measurement is an interaction between the system and a material apparatus (including observer and environment), which together define the conditions under which one particular potential is instantiated as an actual event.

In this sense, measurement is a process — a relational unfolding in which the system’s potential is partially actualised. The outcome is not revealed but generated, through the relational constraints imposed by the measurement context.

This perspective dissolves the paradox of “wavefunction collapse” by seeing it as a transformation of potential into instance, mediated by relational conditions rather than a sudden, mysterious physical event. The wavefunction does not “collapse” like a physical object; it is restructured by actualisation.

Importantly, the apparatus is not a neutral observer but an active participant, providing the relational context that defines what counts as an outcome. Different apparatuses instantiate different aspects of the system’s potential.

Measurement also highlights the context-dependence of quantum phenomena. The actualised property is meaningful only within the relational field that includes the system, the apparatus, and the observer. There is no “property” detached from this context.

In sum, measurement is a creative, relational event — an actualisation of meaning from structured potential — rather than a passive uncovering of hidden facts. It is a moment where possibility becomes reality, shaped by the dynamics of relational fields.

4 The Observer as a Situated Field of Systems

Traditional interpretations often cast the observer as a detached, external subject — a “god’s eye view” perceiving a world of independently existing objects. This perspective struggles to account for the active role of observation in quantum phenomena.

A relational ontology repositions the observer as an embedded, situated system — itself a complex relational field composed of material, semiotic, and cognitive processes. The observer is not outside the system but entwined within it.

Consciousness does not “cause” wavefunction collapse in a mystical sense. Instead, it participates in the actualisation of meaning within relational fields. Observation is a dynamic process in which the observer’s state and the observed system co-define what becomes instantiated.

The observer’s semiotic systems — language, concepts, and sensory apparatus — shape the relational potential, influencing which relations are actualised. Observation thus transforms both the system and the observer, a mutual process of individuation.

This perspective aligns with neurobiological theories that view consciousness as the emergent product of neuronal group selection, where dynamic, selective processes instantiate meaning from potential. The observer’s field is itself a system of potentials and actualisations, resonating with the relational structure of the quantum system.

Rather than a passive watcher, the observer is a participatory agent, whose situatedness and embodiment condition the unfolding of quantum events. Objectivity emerges not from detachment but from the coherence of relational processes shared across observers.

By recognising the observer as a situated field of systems, we bridge the divide between subject and object, and understand observation as a fundamental relational event — a co-actualisation of potential in both system and observer.

5 Rethinking Objectivity, Causality, and Knowledge

Quantum mechanics challenges classical notions of objectivity, causality, and knowledge — concepts often taken for granted in everyday experience. A relational ontology invites us to rethink these ideas in light of structured potential and actualisation.

Objectivity is not about detachment or viewing the world from an external vantage point. Instead, it is about the coherence of relational processes across multiple situated perspectives. When observers share relational fields and contexts, their actualisations align, producing consistent accounts of phenomena. Objectivity, then, emerges from intersubjective resonance, not from observer-independence.

Causality in the quantum realm cannot be understood as simple, linear transmission of influence between independent objects. Instead, causality is the temporal unfolding of relational fields — a co-evolution of potential and instance within systems. The cause-effect relation is embedded in the dynamics of actualisation, where potential relations are instantiated in time.

Knowledge arises not from uncovering pre-existing facts, but from the structured actualisation of potential into meaningful instances. It is an emergent property of relational fields that includes observer, system, and context. Knowledge is inherently contextual and situated, shaped by the conditions of actualisation.

This reframing dissolves classical paradoxes and reveals quantum phenomena as natural expressions of relational reality. Rather than problems to be solved, these challenges become windows into the deeper structure of how reality unfolds.

By embracing a relational ontology, we gain a more coherent, integrated understanding of objectivity, causality, and knowledge — one that honours the dynamic, participatory nature of observation and existence.

6 Individuation and Quantum Fields

Building on our relational ontology, the process of individuation — how entities come to be distinct yet connected — finds a profound expression in the nature of quantum fields.

Quantum fields are not assemblages of isolated particles but fundamental relational structures encompassing all potential instances of particles and their interactions. Each particle is an individuated pattern emerging from the continuous field of potentiality.

Individuation is a process of differentiation within this holistic field, where relational potentials selectively actualise as distinct entities while maintaining their intrinsic connections. The boundaries between particles are not absolute separations but dynamic thresholds within the relational web.

This perspective aligns with the understanding of quantum entanglement as the non-separability of relational potentials, and measurement as the contextual actualisation of individuated instances. It reveals a universe woven from interdependent processes of co-instantiation and co-individuation.

In this light, quantum fields are not mere physical substrates but dynamic landscapes of potential meaning and relation, constantly shaping and reshaping the identities of their constituent parts.

Individuation within quantum fields exemplifies the fundamental relationality of reality — where distinctions arise not from isolation but from the patterned interplay of relational potentials, actualised through measurement, observation, and interaction.