1 Possibility Before Being
We have become accustomed to thinking of possibility as derivative — as something that arises once the real has already taken shape. A tree stands, and we imagine the other forms it could have taken. A person acts, and we imagine what else they might have done. In this framing, possibility is posterior: it trails behind actuality like an echo, like the shadow of what was.
But what if we invert the frame?
What if possibility comes first — not just logically, but ontologically? What if the real is not a given but a cut — an actualisation within a wider field of structured potential? In this view, to exist is not to be in the absolute sense, but to unfold from a system of possible construals.
This is the vision we pursue here. Not a metaphysics of substance, but a relational ontology of unfolding potential — in which meaning, far from being a by-product of biological evolution or cultural contingency, is the very condition for the differentiation of what-is. The symbolic animal — that peculiar creature who lives through language, ritual, system, and self-reflection — is not the climax of evolution but a phase in the evolution of possibility itself.
From the Real to the Possible
In classical metaphysics, Being is primary. The world exists, and our task is to understand it. Possibility appears only as a secondary operation: hypothetical, imaginative, subjunctive. But from the standpoint of relational ontology, this order is reversed. There is no 'thing' apart from the construal that brings it into view — no ‘given’ that precedes its relational actualisation.
This means possibility is not subordinate to the real. Rather, the real is a particular construal within the space of the possible.
The shift is subtle but radical. Where classical thought speaks of emergence — of mind from matter, language from brain, culture from organism — we speak instead of instantiation: a cut from system to instance, from possibility to perspective. In this model, evolution is not a ladder or a tree. It is not progress or contingency. It is the repatterning of potential — the evolving shape of what could be meant.
Not a Story of Origins
This is not a return to myth as the story of beginnings. We are not looking for the first gesture, the first word, the first meaning. Those are illusions, products of a linear imagination. What we seek instead is a way of understanding how meaning itself evolves — not as the product of external forces, but as the system through which unfolding becomes thinkable at all.
To think in terms of possibility before being is to think before time, before form, before separation. It is to imagine not a primal chaos, but a structured openness — a space not empty, but pregnant with relational tension. Not a void, but a system. Not a big bang, but a relational field waiting to be cut.
And from this cut, this construal — not imposed, but immanent — comes experience, perspective, history, world.
The Road Ahead
In this series, we will trace the evolution of possibility across multiple phases of construal. From pre-semiotic fields to the emergence of ritual and symbolic system. From gesture to grammar. From biologically-oriented coupling to the symbolic reflexivity of myth, ethics, and theory.
At each phase, we will ask: What kind of possibility becomes available here? And what is required for such possibility to be enacted, inhabited, constrained, or opened?
Ultimately, we will suggest that evolution is not about life adapting to a pre-given world — but about meaning systems evolving to construe a world that could not otherwise exist.
This is not a philosophy of life. It is a mythos of possibility.
And we begin not with what is, but with what might become.
2 The Pre-Semiotic Cut
Before meaning, before symbols, before even the semblance of communicative coordination — there is difference. Not the difference between things, for there are no things yet. But the differentiation of potential within a relational field: a tension that allows something to be distinguished from what it is not, even before it has any name.
We call this the pre-semiotic cut — the most primitive gesture of construal, where the possibility of meaning begins to take shape. It is not symbolic, not cognitive, not even sentient in any familiar sense. But it marks the first alignment of potential, the earliest tension between system and instance.
This is where the evolution of possibility begins.
Before Representation: Construal Without Symbol
Much of our intellectual heritage assumes that meaning begins with representation: a mark stands for a thing, a sound names an object, a gesture signifies an intent. But this view already presupposes a symbolic order. It assumes the existence of separable entities — sign and referent, form and content, self and world.
Relational ontology offers a different path. It does not begin with the symbol, but with construal: the perspectival cut that allows experience to be organised.
In the pre-semiotic field, there is no subject to experience and no object to be experienced. There is only the system of potential tensions, through which certain alignments become more likely than others. These are not yet meanings, but they are proto-meaningful: configurations of potential that, when constrained in particular ways, will become meaning.
In other words, possibility is already structured before the symbolic emerges.
Attunement Without Intentionality
To speak of this phase is necessarily paradoxical. We are describing what cannot yet be observed or expressed — a phase prior to expression itself. But we can gesture toward it.
We can imagine, for example, an organism whose coupling with its environment is not yet mediated by signs, but is nonetheless shaped by patterned responsiveness. A molecule “prefers” one bond over another. A cell “follows” a gradient. A nervous system “settles” into rhythms. These are not metaphors. They are actualisations of pre-semiotic potential.
What we see here is attunement without intentionality: coordination without symbolisation. No meaning is yet made, but the conditions for construal are evolving. The world is not yet known, but it is coming into knowability.
The Cut That Prepares the Cut
Why call this a "cut" at all, if nothing is being named, pointed to, or distinguished as such? Because even here, we find the incipient separation of a perspective. Not the perspective of a subject, but the differentiation of a system into zones of relative stability and flux. A proto-instance. A tension in the field. A directionality within potential.
This is the precondition for meaning. And it is already a form of evolution.
Not the evolution of life adapting to fixed conditions, but the evolution of possibility itself: a shifting in what can be enacted, aligned, inhabited. The symbolic animal will emerge much later, but its ground is already being laid in these pre-semiotic alignments — these cuts that do not yet know themselves as cuts.
Beyond Mechanism, Before Mind
This model asks us to think beyond both mechanism and mind. Not a mechanical system blindly following laws, nor a conscious subject navigating a world. But a field of potentialities gradually stratifying into systems and constraints, from which both mind and world will eventually emerge.
Before symbol, before syntax, before subject — there is a world in the making. Not a chaos waiting to be ordered, but a structured openness evolving toward reflexivity.
And that is where we turn next: to the first stirrings of systemic coordination — the phase in which difference becomes patterned, and possibility begins to take on semiotic form.
3 From Alignment to System
Meaning does not erupt fully formed into the world. It unfolds through phases — slow, recursive differentiations of what is possible. In the previous post, we explored the pre-semiotic cut, where construal begins not as representation but as attunement within a field of potential. Now we move to the next shift: from alignment to system.
Here, the world is not merely reacted to — it is patterned. Alignment becomes regularity. Tension becomes constraint. And through this stabilisation of coordination, a new kind of potential emerges: systemic possibility.
Patterning as a Precondition of Meaning
To say that meaning depends on pattern is not to reduce it to regularity, but to acknowledge the precondition for construal: without some degree of recurrence, no semiotic system can evolve. But this recurrence need not be rigid or mechanical. It is better seen as a tendency — a drift toward attractors in a field of interaction.
When these patterns constrain what can happen next, the field begins to articulate itself. A difference now makes a difference, not only because it happens, but because it conditions what may follow. This is the beginning of system — not as a fixed totality, but as a theory of its own instances.
And with it comes the first glimpse of meaning potential.
The Emergence of Systemic Constraints
Let us imagine a population of organisms — primitive, without symbolic communication, but embedded in patterned interaction with their environment and each other. Over time, certain couplings are reinforced, not by intention but by consequence. Certain sequences stabilise. Certain reactions feed back into their conditions of possibility.
This is not yet semiosis, but it is already systemic: the field is no longer a loose collection of alignments, but a dynamic ecology of constraints.
Such constraints do not suppress possibility; they generate it. They transform an undifferentiated field into a structured one — a topology of what can be enacted. System, in this view, is not a mechanism of control but a medium of meaning.
System as Evolving Theory
This brings us to a key insight of relational ontology: a system is a theory of the instance. It is not a collection of parts or rules, but a structured potential — an orientation toward what might be actualised.
The evolution of possibility thus entails the emergence of systems that constrain and enable what counts as a meaningful act. These systems are not static. They are themselves evolving theories, adapting as their instances feed back into the potential they instantiate.
In short: possibility evolves not by increasing variety alone, but by differentiating systems of potential — systems that make new construals possible.
The Semiotic Threshold Approaches
At this point in our story, we have not yet crossed the threshold into meaning. But we are approaching it. With the emergence of systemic constraints, the field is no longer merely reacting — it is beginning to construe itself.
Whereas pre-semiotic alignments were shaped by implicit tension, systemic patterns now shape the space of potential actions. This opens the door to symbolic abstraction: the power to construe construal itself.
That is where we turn next — to the emergence of the semiotic animal, and with it, the birth of symbolic meaning.
4 The Semiotic Threshold
We now arrive at a crucial inflection in our unfolding arc. If the earlier phases traced the emergence of possibility through pre-semiotic alignment and systemic constraint, this post turns to the next great transformation: the semiotic threshold.
Here, for the first time, a field of patterned interactions crosses a relational cut. The system begins to construe itself as system — not by reflex, but by symbolic abstraction. A new order of reality begins to unfold: the order of meaning.
What Is the Semiotic Threshold?
The semiotic threshold is not a boundary between life and language, nor a sharp division between instinct and culture. It is a perspectival shift within the evolution of potential: from acting within a system, to acting on the system as such.
This does not mean organisms become aware in a reflective sense. It means that acts become symbolic — not merely coordinated or conditioned, but interpretable within a system of construal.
What marks this threshold is not the appearance of a particular form (gesture, sound, mark), but the emergence of a relational function: the ability to mean — to construe experience as experience.
Symbolic Abstraction as Systemic Recursion
At the semiotic threshold, the system does something it has never done before: it begins to re-enter itself. Its patterns become interpretable within the system. Its instances are not only shaped by the system, but reshape the system through interpretation.
This is the core recursive move of symbolic abstraction:
To construe the construal.
This recursion is not infinite. It is layered, stratified, constrained. But it opens a new space: a metasystemic space in which meaning can evolve. This is not just the coordination of acts — it is the coordination of construals, the social evolution of symbolic systems.
The Symbolic Animal
What evolves at this threshold is not simply a new species — but a new order of being. The symbolic animal is not defined by biology, cognition, or culture in isolation. It is defined by its mode of possibility.
To live as a symbolic animal is to live within — and through — a system of construal. It is to experience reality not only as what is, but as what is meant. The environment becomes interpretable. Action becomes negotiable. Existence itself becomes semiotic.
This is not a higher rung on some evolutionary ladder. It is a cut across modes of potential — a shift from enacting the possible, to inhabiting possibility as such.
The Mythos of Meaning Begins
The semiotic threshold is the true beginning of what we might call a mythos of meaning — not in the sense of an ancient tale, but in the deep sense of a shared construal of what meaning is.
From here, evolution proceeds not only biologically, nor even culturally, but symbolically — through the expansion and differentiation of meaning potential. That is the path we now trace: from symbolic construal to semiotic system, from lived tension to reflexive mythos.
We are now fully within the domain of meaning.
And so in the next post, we turn to the dynamics of symbolic evolution — where construal becomes social, systems differentiate, and possibility itself becomes a medium of collective transformation.
5 The Symbolic Drift
Having crossed the semiotic threshold, the symbolic animal embarks on a remarkable journey: the continuous unfolding and differentiation of symbolic systems. This process is not random; it is guided by an emergent logic we call the symbolic drift — the ongoing evolution of symbolic possibility.
The Drift as Systemic Differentiation
The symbolic drift is not a linear progression or steady climb but a complex differentiation within a semiotic ecology. Symbolic systems multiply, diverge, and recombine, opening new fields of possibility while constraining others.
This differentiation is systemic. It is not just the growth of vocabulary or grammar but the reconfiguration of the entire symbolic space — new genres, new norms, new modes of orientation. Each symbolic innovation alters the landscape of meaning, shifting what can be said, thought, and enacted.
Symbolic Evolution as Repatterning
The drift is also a repatterning. Patterns that were once stable may become unstable or obsolete, while novel configurations emerge. This process is driven by internal tensions, external pressures, and reflexive reorganisation.
Unlike biological evolution, symbolic evolution is not limited by physical inheritance. Instead, it evolves through social transmission, collective memory, and ritualised repetition — processes that enable symbolic systems to carry forward, transform, and reimagine possibility.
Symbolic Systems as Medium and Constraint
Symbolic systems simultaneously enable and constrain. They are the medium through which meaning is made and shared, but they also set the limits of what can be meaningfully said.
Understanding this dual role is essential. It accounts for why symbolic systems can foster both creativity and conservatism; both innovation and tradition; both freedom and constraint.
The Mythos Grows
As symbolic systems drift and differentiate, they generate what we call a mythos of meaning — a shared orientation toward the future, grounded in historical sedimentation but always open to reimagination.
This mythos is not a fixed story but a living constellation of symbolic commitments — a systemic ecology of possibility that grounds identity, community, and action.
Toward a New Symbolic Ethics
The symbolic drift invites an ethical stance. If symbolic life is always becoming, always transforming, then our participation in meaning is a form of responsibility.
We do not merely inherit symbolic systems; we inhabit and reshape them. To live symbolically is to orient oneself within an evolving field of possibility — and to act in ways that acknowledge the consequences of that orientation.
In our next and final post of this series, we explore the mythos of meaning itself — how it sustains, challenges, and invites us to live otherwise.
6 The Mythos of Meaning
We have journeyed from the pre-semiotic cut, through systemic emergence and the semiotic threshold, to the symbolic drift — the ongoing evolution of symbolic possibility. Now we arrive at the heart of our inquiry: the mythos of meaning.
Mythos Beyond Storytelling
“Mythos” here is not mere story or legend. It is the systemic symbolic commitment that grounds and orients a collective. It is the living architecture through which meaning takes shape, sustains identity, and generates futures.
A mythos is the dynamic horizon of possibility within which symbolic animals live. It is the shared web of construals that both enables and constrains what can be said, done, and imagined.
The Mythos as System of Possibility
The mythos is a patterned field of symbolic relations — a network of narratives, values, rituals, and semiotic resources that together shape a community’s orientation to the world and its own becoming.
It is not fixed or given, but always in motion: evolving, contested, renegotiated.
The mythos is the living ecology of meaning within which symbolic life unfolds.
Living Otherwise: Ethics and Transformation
To inhabit a mythos is to participate in a symbolic order. But because the mythos is always partial and provisional, it also invites transformation — the possibility of living otherwise.
This is the ethical horizon of symbolic life: not to be trapped by inherited construals, but to respond reflexively — to reshape the mythos through praxis, imagination, and critique.
The Evolution of Possibility Continues
The mythos is not an endpoint but a phase in the ongoing evolution of possibility. It opens space for new construals, new forms of life, new symbolic worlds.
In this sense, evolution is never finished. It is always a becoming.
Final Reflections
This series has sought to reframe evolution as the unfolding of possibility itself — not as the survival of the fittest or the march of progress, but as the evolving architecture of meaning.
We are symbolic animals living in symbolic worlds — worlds that we both inherit and invent.
Our task is not only to understand this condition but to inhabit it responsibly: to engage with the mythos of meaning not as passive recipients but as active participants and co-creators.