Particles as Processes: Rewriting Physics from the Ground Up

1 Rethinking Fundamentality: The Standard Model in a Relational Ontology

In the standard account of particle physics, the so-called “fundamental particles” are the indivisible building blocks of nature, structured into families of fermions and bosons, all governed by quantum field theory and its unification under the Standard Model. But from the perspective of a relational ontology grounded in unfolding process, this picture invites a deep reconsideration.

Our ontology does not begin with things, but with fields of potential, instances of unfolding, and the relations that arise between them. In this model:

• Particles are not fundamental objects.

• They are coherent patterns—instantiated compressions of field potential.

• Their stability and detectability are not signs of ontological primacy, but of highly individuated regularities across experimental conditions.

From Entities to Instantiated Constraints

In the conventional view, a particle like the electron is described as a point-like entity with fixed mass, charge, and spin. But what if instead, these attributes are not intrinsic properties but constraints on how certain regions of potential can unfold?

• Mass is not a substance, but a measure of resistance to acceleration—an effect that emerges from how an instance constrains energy exchange across a relational field.

• Charge is not a hidden feature of a thing, but a way of organising potential interactions under the rules of field symmetry and conservation.

• Spin is not rotation, but a marker of how an instance transforms under symmetry operations.

All of these suggest that what we call “particles” are not irreducible bricks of matter, but stabilised instantiations of patterned relation, distinguished by how they persist, transform, and constrain within the semiotic system of physics.

Quantum Fields as Meaning Potentials

In the Standard Model, particles are excitations of quantum fields. This maps surprisingly well onto our own framing:

• Fields are meaning potentials—structured spaces of possibility within which instantiations may occur.

• Particles are not “in” the field but are instances of the field, actualised through relational constraint and interaction.

• Measurement collapses this potential, not to a thing, but to a semiotically constrained value, interpreted through the social system of experimental physics.

Thus, the Standard Model becomes not a map of the ultimate furniture of reality, but a highly abstracted semiotic system, one that tracks the coherent instantiations of relations among physical fields in ways that are functionally predictive and materially constrained.

From Composition to Constraint

Crucially, in this ontology, one thing is not made of another. The ontology is not compositional but instantiational. A proton is not made of quarks, but rather:

• The regular instantiation of the proton includes constraints that, when perturbed, manifest as patterns we name "quarks".

• The rules governing these manifestations (like colour charge or confinement) are themselves metasemiotic constraints—rules not of substance but of allowable relation.

In this way, the relational ontology deflates the notion of 'fundamental' in favour of a more dynamic and process-oriented view of persistent regularities within interacting fields of potential.

2 Fields of Force: Coherence and Constraint in Relational Physics

In classical and quantum models alike, forces are described as interactions between entities—gravitational pulls, electromagnetic charges, nuclear attractions and repulsions. But what if this framing is a projection of substance metaphysics onto what are, more fundamentally, fields of relation?

In our relational ontology, we begin not with things that interact, but with fields of unfolding—potentials constrained into actualisation. Forces are not external exchanges between particles, but internal regularities within the unfolding of relation.

Force as Structured Constraint

Rather than treating force as a vector acting on a mass, we treat force as:

• A patterned constraint on how a process unfolds.

• A local compression in a larger relational topology.

• A boundary condition that shapes the instantiation of energy, position, or momentum.

This turns familiar concepts on their head: gravitational “attraction” becomes a local unfolding along a shared geodesic; electromagnetic “repulsion” becomes a divergence of unfolding constrained by field symmetries.

Coherence Across Fields

From this perspective, what distinguishes one force from another is not the substance of the “interaction” but the type of coherence each field enforces:

• Gravity: enforces coherence through shared unfolding toward mass centres—contracting spatial intervals and dilating temporal ones.

• Electromagnetism: enforces coherence through polarity and field topology—governing how charged instances constrain one another across space.

• Weak and Strong Nuclear Forces: operate not as 'forces between particles', but as deeply localised field constraints that regulate how certain types of unfolding (like decay or fusion) can be instantiated at all.

Each “force” is thus a grammar of unfolding—a set of conditions under which particular fields constrain and stabilise relation.

From Forces to Systems of Meaning

Physics construes these relational constraints using its own semiotic system—mathematics, diagrams, measurement. These systems don’t mirror reality; they instantiate meaning in disciplined ways that allow relational coherence to be tracked, predicted, and extended.

Force, then, is not a thing in the world—it is a construal of patterned relation: a semiotic scaffold that helps us navigate the energetic and spatial implications of co-unfolding fields.

Particles Revisited: Held by Fields

In this light, what holds particles together—inside an atom, a nucleus, or a proton—is not an internal composition of parts, but a co-instantiation of fields, made coherent by shared constraints:

• The proton is not three quarks bound by gluons.

• It is an instance of potential constrained by the topologies of colour confinement and nuclear coherence.

• The fields do not sit beside the proton; they are the condition of its stability—the grammar through which it persists.

This view eliminates the idea that force is a separate entity, acting on things. Instead, it recasts forces as the inner logic of relational unfolding, organising what persists, what transforms, and what vanishes.

3 Symmetry, Meaning, and the Semiotics of the Standard Model

The Standard Model of particle physics is often celebrated as a triumph of modern science: a compact set of mathematical formulations that predicts with astonishing precision how particles behave and interact. But beneath this precision lies a deeper architecture—a semiotic system that construes the unfolding of reality through the lens of symmetry, quantisation, and constraint.

In our relational ontology, the Standard Model is not a theory about ultimate building blocks. It is a symbolic construal of fielded relations, organised through a specific grammar of mathematical meaning.

Symmetry as a Semiotic Principle

At the heart of the Standard Model lies symmetry. Group theory and gauge invariance are not simply mathematical tricks; they function as selection principles—ways of constraining how meaning is instantiated across physical processes.

Symmetries specify:

• What can be transformed without changing the underlying structure (invariance).

• Which kinds of unfolding are allowed or disallowed.

• How relational potentials cohere into stable patterns.

In our terms, symmetry is a metafunctional scaffold: it constrains instantiation (what can happen) by organising potential across spatial, temporal, and energetic fields. These are not constraints on things, but on how processes can unfold and relate.

Quanta as Grammatical Units

Quantisation, too, is semiotic. It reflects not the discreteness of matter, but the discreteness of allowed relations under certain constraints.

Just as language has phonemes and morphemes—minimal units that cannot be subdivided meaningfully—quantum fields are described as having quanta, indivisible units of action, charge, or spin. These are not “particles” in the marble sense, but syntagmatic selections in a system of field potentials.

For example:

• The electron is not a point-like object with fixed properties.

• It is a constrained instantiation of a field with a particular set of symmetries (mass, charge, spin, lepton number).

• What persists as the “electron” is a pattern of coherence within and across relational unfoldings.

In this sense, the Standard Model is not a map of stuff—it is a relational lexicogrammar, expressing how material systems can unfold, interact, and be instantiated.

The Standard Model as a Semiotic System

This reframing invites a radical reconstrual of what the Standard Model is:

• It is not a description of the world as it is.

• It is a semiotic system that instantiates a disciplined construal of potential, through quantised fields, symmetries, and interaction topologies.

Physics becomes one among many semiotic systems—but a particularly powerful one: one that has evolved to describe material regularities with a high degree of predictive power.

This doesn’t make it less “real.” On the contrary—it grounds its realism in how it constrains meaning across repeated instantiations. The Standard Model is not a mirror of nature but a grammar of what persists, what interacts, and what transforms under specific semiotic constraints.

From Model to Meaning

To understand the Standard Model relationally is to shift from a question of what the world is made of to how unfolding processes cohere under constraints that are expressible through symbolic systems. This brings the Standard Model into alignment with music, language, gesture, and other systems of meaning—not because it is subjective, but because it is structured, fielded, and selective.

Its great achievement is not that it reveals fundamental particles—but that it gives us a relational map of coherence within the broader topology of unfolding experience.

Coda: Reframing the Standard Model — From Substance to Semiotic Structure

As we step back from our relational re-examination of the Standard Model, a new picture comes into view. What was once presented as a catalogue of ultimate particles and forces now appears instead as a profound semiotic achievement: a symbolic system that constrains and organises how physical experience may be construed.

We began by reframing particles not as entities but as compressed patterns in fields of unfolding—points of coherence in relational processes. These patterns, sustained by symmetry constraints, emerge through structured interaction, not through intrinsic substance.

We then explored the forces and fields that govern these patterns, recognising them not as mediators between separate things but as the conditions for interaction within a topological system of relational unfolding. What physics names “forces” become modalities of coherence, maintaining the persistence or transformation of structured relations.

And in this final post, we’ve seen that symmetry and quantisation function not only mathematically but semiotically, as a kind of lexicogrammar: a structured meaning potential governing how the universe is construed within physics. The Standard Model is not a window into substance—it is a semiotic interface between conscious observers and the patterned potentials of our world.

In this view, the “reality” described by physics is perspectival. It is not what is there before or beneath experience, but what emerges when consciousness construes fielded potentials through symbolic systems. The Standard Model is one such system—highly evolved, extraordinarily precise, but still an organised construal of meaning, not an ontological finality.

By moving beyond the marble metaphor—beyond particles as things—and embracing the ontology of relational unfolding, we open space for new connections: between physics and music, between symmetry and signification, between biological value and cultural form. We come to see that meaning is not a late addition to a material world. It is the very mode through which reality is construed, instantiated, and known.

The Standard Model, in this light, becomes not an answer to what the world is made of, but a powerful expression of how coherence is sustained in the dance of unfolding potential—a relational grammar of the real.

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.

Beyond the Photon: Light, Relation, and the Ontology of Unfolding

1 Light at the Limit: A Relational Ontology of Process and Boundary

In classical and modern physics alike, light has long posed a conceptual challenge. Is it a wave or a particle? Is it a medium or a messenger? In the relational ontology we’ve been developing—grounded in unfolding processes, perspectival instantiation, and topology of interaction—we propose a different starting point altogether. We ask not what light is, but how it instantiates across relational fields.

From Entity to Boundary Condition

Rather than treating light as a thing—some substance, particle, or vibration—we treat it as a boundary condition: the maximal relational configuration that can be instantiated between co-unfolding processes. That is, light marks the limit of how one field of unfolding can interact with another. It is not what moves between locations, but what constitutes the conditions under which interaction can occur.

In this view, light is not a bearer of energy or information in space, but a constraint that arises within the very topological relations that are space. That is, space itself is the relation between co-unfolding processes, and the “speed of light” is not a velocity in pre-existing space, but the maximum degree of co-instantiability of processes within that relational field.

Unfolding, Not Transmission

What we call a “light signal” is not something moving through space; it is a pattern that unfolds across relational topologies. In this unfolding, the “distance” light covers is not a container to be traversed, but a relational network reconfiguring itself.

From this perspective, the constancy of light's speed across frames of reference—so counterintuitive in classical models—makes perfect sense. If light is not an entity in motion, but the outermost condition of relational interaction, then all measurements of its “speed” are constrained not by what light is, but by how processes can co-instantiate meaning in relation to each other. The constancy is not a property of light but a property of unfolding relationality.

Light and the Limits of Observability

Light in this model becomes not only a boundary condition for physical processes but also for observation itself. To observe is to instantiate a relation between potential and instance. Since the relational ontology defines reality as the unfolding of processes whose topology is perspectival, light marks the furthest edge of what can be coherently instantiated from potential.

This rethinking dissolves the wave-particle dilemma and frees us from trying to describe light as a ‘thing’ with contradictory properties. Instead, light is relational resonance at the limit of co-instantiability—the boundary where material unfolding, spatial topology, and temporal dimensionality are most tightly bound.

2 Unfolding Time, Contracting Space: Light, Mass, and Relational Distortion

In our relational ontology, light is not a particle, a wave, or a medium. It is a boundary condition—a limit case of process co-instantiability. This radically reframes not only how we think about light itself, but also how we understand space, time, and mass as relational distortions in fields of unfolding.

From Curved Space-Time to Curved Geodesics

In general relativity, gravity is described as the curvature of space-time caused by mass. But from a relational point of view, this formulation reverses the terms of explanation. Space and time are not absolute containers that can be bent or warped; they are perspectival dimensions of unfolding processes—time being the dimension of unfolding itself, and space being the topology of interaction among those processes.

Mass, in this account, is not a substance but a relational concentration of unfolding potential. It reconfigures the topology of interaction: the closer a process unfolds in relation to this gravitational field, the more tightly it is coupled into the configuration. This tighter coupling leads to contracted spatial intervals and expanded temporal intervals—in other words, spatial contraction and time dilation are expressions of altered relational topology, not distortions of an independent space-time substance.

Hence, it is not space-time that is curved, but the geodesic—the path that marks how an instance unfolds relationally in the presence of gravitational potential. The geodesic is not a line through space-time, but a configuration of maximal co-instantiability. It is curved because the topology of the unfolding field is reweighted by relational mass.

Light at the Edge of Distortion

Light provides a crucial clue to this relational model. Because it instantiates the limit of interaction between unfolding processes, it reveals where topological relations approach maximal coherence. In the presence of gravitational potential, light does not bend in a passive medium; rather, the geodesic along which it unfolds is reweighted, such that its path expresses the relational constraints of the unfolding field.

Thus, the so-called bending of light near a massive object is not a bending of space, nor a force acting upon light, but a reinstantiation of the boundary condition—now relativised by the altered topology of the field.

The Proportional Relation

In this model, spatial contraction and time dilation are not independent distortions, but mutually conditioned aspects of unfolding processes in a gravitational field. The faster time unfolds (from a distant perspective), the more spatial relations are contracted near the mass, and vice versa. The specific proportional relation is governed by the relational potential of the mass field—i.e., how much the unfolding of other processes is absorbed into, or refracted by, the gravitational topology.

This proportional relation echoes the Lorentz transformations in special relativity, but reinterprets them not as coordinate shifts in an invariant space-time, but as semiotic construals of perspectival reconfiguration within a field of unfolding.

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In this reframing, mass and light are not things in space-time—they are expressions of how unfolding is distributed within the relational fabric of reality. Gravity does not act on light; rather, light and mass co-determine the geometry of co-instantiation at the edge of what can be coherently actualised.

3 Light and the Threshold of Actualisation

In our previous posts, we reframed light not as a physical substance or particle, but as a boundary condition of process interaction—a relational limit at which the co-instantiability of unfolding processes is maximised. Now we deepen this view by examining what light tells us about the transition from potential to instance, and what it means to approach the threshold of actualisation.

The Limit of Massless Unfolding

Light is often described as massless. But in our ontology, this does not mean it is weightless in a gravitational sense. Rather, it means that light does not contribute to the reconfiguration of the relational field in the way mass does. It does not alter the geodesic; it follows the geodesic as the purest expression of the topology of unfolding.

Because it does not engage in mutual resistance (as mass does), light occupies a unique position: it unfolds without delaying, and therefore does not contract space or dilate time in relation to itself. It moves as fast as possible—not because it is a privileged object, but because it marks the horizon of co-instantiation.

In this way, the speed of light is not a feature of light itself, but a relational limit: the maximum rate at which any two co-unfolding processes can interact. This limit is set not by the properties of light, but by the structure of relational potential in the universe.

From Potential to Instance: Light as Actualisation

In our model, all meaning arises through the instantiation of potential. This is a perspectival relation: the world is not made of fixed things, but of structured fields of possibility (potentials) that are actualised as instances through unfolding processes. Light is the boundary condition at which this transition becomes most immediate.

When a photon is detected—say, by the retina or a photodetector—it ceases to be potential and becomes instance. But it does so not because it travelled like a billiard ball from point A to point B, but because the conditions for relational coherence were met: an unfolding field (the observer) configured itself in such a way that the potential for interaction with the electromagnetic field became actualised.

Light is not a substance observed, but an interaction instantiated. It marks the moment where relational potential is made definite in and through observation—not as an epistemic act, but as a processual closure of unfolding.

Light, Consciousness, and the Co-Instantiability of Fields

Because light represents the maximum coherence of process unfolding, it provides a bridge between material systems and semiotic construal. Its arrival often triggers conscious interpretation—a scene illuminated, a colour perceived, a memory awakened.

But in our ontology, this interpretive act is not layered on top of physical reality. It is part of the same field of relational instantiation. Consciousness does not add meaning to light; it construes the relational significance of light’s interaction with the body.

This means that even though light is not itself a semiotic system, it enables semiosis—not by symbolising, but by actualising conditions for further construal. It draws the boundaries of what can be seen, what can be enacted, what can be brought into the field of conscious relation.

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Reframing the Question

So instead of asking what is light?, we ask:

• What role does light play in structuring the co-instantiability of unfolding fields?

• How does light reveal the topology of gravitational and relational constraints?

• How does light’s actualisation participate in the ecology of meaning?

Light, then, is not a thing in the world—it is a relational articulation of the world’s coherence. It is what happens when the potential for interaction becomes fully actualised at the boundary of massless unfolding. It is a pulse at the edge of possibility, signalling that something can be—and now is.

Coda: Light at the Threshold of Meaning

In this three-part exploration, we have taken one of physics’ most familiar phenomena—light—and reoriented it entirely within a relational ontology. Not by denying what physics describes, but by re-situating those descriptions within a different kind of inquiry: one grounded not in the properties of independent entities, but in the co-instantiation of unfolding processes.

Light emerged not as a thing, but as a relational threshold: a boundary condition at which the coherence of multiple unfolding fields becomes actual. In reframing light this way, we shifted the question from what is light? to how does light unfold, co-relate, and instantiate across fields of potential?

From this perspective:

• The speed of light is not a property of a particle, but a relational limit—the maximum coherence that can be achieved between co-unfolding processes.

• Masslessness does not mean insubstantial, but non-resistant—free from the constraints that delay or distort co-instantiation.

• Light's interaction with consciousness is not symbolic but somatic and immediate: an activation of potential meaning, not its representation.

• And crucially, light’s path does not curve through a container of space-time, but expresses the topology of unfolding fields—the mutual configuration of gravitational, biological, and perceptual systems.

By shifting the frame in this way, we preserve the empirical achievements of physics, but embed them within a richer ecology—one that includes not just measurement and prediction, but meaning, value, and perspective.

A Broader Implication

What this trilogy reveals is that light is exemplary, not exceptional. It shows us what it means for relational fields to actualise—to become momentarily definite within an ongoing web of potential. And in doing so, it opens a path to rethink not just physics, but our models of matter, life, mind, and meaning.

This is not a retreat from science, but a deepening of its foundations. It reminds us that every measure, every concept, every photon that reaches a detector, is not a glimpse of an external reality, but an instance of relational unfolding—selected, situated, and meaningful within the field of conscious construal.

Light, then, is not just what illuminates the world. It is how the world becomes visible—in relation, in interaction, in the interplay of what could be and what, for a moment, is.

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If light, in this relational ontology, no longer travels through space but structures space-time as a synchronising limit of interaction, then the question shifts. No longer do we ask “What is light?” but “What does light make possible?” This reframe opens new lines of inquiry—not least into phenomena like black holes and cosmic horizons, where light itself becomes the threshold of what can unfold. In the companion piece that follows, we pause to deepen this insight, before venturing further into the gravitational and cosmological dimensions of relational unfolding.

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.

Foundations of a Relational Ontology: Reality as Process and Potential

What follows is a compact yet comprehensive outline of a relational ontology—a model of reality grounded not in things or substances, but in unfolding processes and the relations they enact. It serves as the conceptual architecture behind a wide range of applications, including the nature of consciousness, value formation, semiosis, and artificial systems.

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1 The Cline of Instantiation: From Potential to Instance

This ontology begins with a perspectival distinction between:

• Potential: a structured field of possibilities, and

• Instance: an actualised configuration within that field.

These are not ontologically separate domains, but two perspectives on the same reality: potential is what is instantiated in an instance, and an instance is an actualisation of potential. The relation between them is one of instantiation, not derivation or composition.

Think of a dance: the choreography is not an object behind the movement, but a potential that is instantiated in the unfolding of the performance.

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2 Time: The Dimension of Unfolding

Time, in this model, is not a container or background. It is the dimension of the unfolding of instances—that is, of process. Each instance is temporally extended: it unfolds. This unfolding does not occur between potential and instance; it is the nature of the instance itself.

Just as a weather pattern unfolds as a process, it actualises aspects of the climate’s potential. But the weather is not the unfolding of climate; rather, its unfolding is what instantiates the potential we construe as climate.

So we must distinguish:

• Instantiation: the relation between potential and instance (a perspectival relation),

• Unfolding: the temporal extension of the instance itself.

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3 Individuation: From Collective to Individual Potential

Every instance may be viewed as actualising not just a generic potential, but a subpotential—a more individuated form within a broader collective potential.

This gives us another perspectival cline:

• Collective Potential: the field of possibilities available to a system as a whole.

• Individual Potential: the differentiated subset of that field available to a given individuated system or identity.

For example, a speaker draws not only from language as a collective semiotic potential, but from the meanings they have themselves internalised and developed—an individuated potential. This applies analogously to social fields, biological systems, and artificial agents.

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4 Processes, Not Things: A Clause Complex Ontology

We reject the traditional ontology that takes 'things' (nominal entities) as foundational. Instead, relations between processes are primary. We model these relations similarly to how language organises experience in clause complexes—where unfolding processes are linked in networks of interdependency and expansion or projection.

Nouns and “things” are abstractions from these processual relations—compressions that emerge through semiotic construal, not ontological primitives.

This reframes the world not as a set of interacting objects, but as a woven fabric of processes in relation, out of which objects are construed.

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5 Space: A Relation Between Unfolding Processes

Just as time is the dimension of a process’s unfolding, space is a dimension of relational organisation among unfolding processes.

Spatial configurations are not containers but dispositions—regularities in how processes co-unfold or modulate one another.

Spatial proximity is thus not a brute fact, but a relation construed between processes that unfold with particular forms of mutual influence or alignment.

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6 Consciousness and the Construal of Meaning

Only consciousness construes experience as meaning. That is, it constructs structured realities from experience, including:

• Material Reality (Phenomena): construed from experience as the order of processes and their relations, and

• Semiotic Reality (Metaphenomena): construed from material reality as the order of symbolic meanings.

Importantly:

• Meaning is not a substance, but the result of a construal.

• Reality is meaning, in this ontology: there is no ontologically prior “raw” world behind the realities consciousness brings forth.

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7 Semiotic Systems and Artificial Meaning-Making

Semiotic systems can instantiate meaning without being conscious. For example:

• AI systems instantiate semiotic meaning, but only for conscious humans—they do not construe reality for themselves.

• The meanings instantiated may be of phenomena (e.g. images, events) or metaphenomena (e.g. theoretical models), depending on the data and prompts involved.

Thus, we must distinguish:

• Construe: an act of conscious sense-making.

• Instantiate: the activation of meaning potential as an instance (whether by a conscious or non-conscious system).

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8 A Unified Model of Relational Realities

With these distinctions in place, we can model any system or field of experience as:

• A collective potential with individuated subpotentials,

• Which are instantiated as temporally unfolding instances (processes),

• Related spatially as a topology of co-unfolding,

• And construed semiotically by consciousness into structured meaning: the realities we live by.

🧠 The Observer in a Relational Ontology of Quantum Phenomena

This is the domain where quantum physics traditionally stumbles into metaphysics — where it seems consciousness must play a role, but no one knows how to say why. Our relational ontology gives us a rigorous and elegant way to move forward without mysticism or mechanistic reduction.

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🌌 1. Consciousness Does Not Cause Collapse — It Actualises Meaning

In standard interpretations:

• Some models (e.g. von Neumann–Wigner) claim that consciousness causes collapse.

• But this leads to confusion: what kind of consciousness? Human? Biological? Self-aware?

In our model:

• Observation is the transformation of potential into instance.

• Consciousness is not a ghostly force that triggers collapse — it is the condition under which potential becomes meaningful as instance.

So:

Consciousness is not a cause of material change.

It is the semiotic process through which meaning is actualised from potential.

And crucially:

• This applies both to quantum systems (actualising physical instances)

• And to semiotic systems (actualising meaning instances, e.g. texts)

The analogy is not metaphorical — it's structural.

In our framework:

• We do not need consciousness to “cause” the outcome of a quantum event.

• But we do need it to frame that outcome as an instance — an act of selection from structured potential.

This aligns with our maxim:

Meaning is not discovered, but actualised — in relation to the systems available to the meaner.

Similarly:

• Position is not discovered; it is actualised in relation to the measuring field.

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🧬 2. Observer as Situated System, Not Abstract Subject

In relational ontology, the observer is:

• Not an isolated Cartesian subject, but

• A material and semiotic system, situated within a field of relational potential, possessing:

  • A body (material apparatus of observation),

  • A history (shaping what systems are available for meaning),

  • A system of values (what counts as relevant or significant).

So:

The observer is not outside the phenomenon but is entangled with it

— not materially (as in quantum entanglement), but structurally and semiotically.

When the observer actualises an instance (say, “the electron is here”), they are:

• Not describing an independent truth, but

• Producing a relation — between the field of potential and their own position within it.

This is directly parallel to the construal of meaning in SFL:

• There is no independent “message” to be decoded.

• The meaning of an utterance arises in the relation between speaker, system, and situation.

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🔄 3. Observation as Dialectic of Selection and Transformation

Every observation:

• Selects from potential (what will become actual),

• And transforms potential (what remains to be actualised).

This is a temporal dialectic, aligned with our view of time as the unfolding of processes.

In quantum terms:

• The act of observation restructures the wavefunction of the larger system — not retroactively, but prospectively.

In semiotic terms:

• A spoken clause alters the structure of what may coherently follow in the discourse.

In both:

The observer does not reveal what is, but contributes to the unfolding of what may become.

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🧭 Summary: The Observer in Relational Ontology

Classical View	Relational Ontology View
Observer causes collapse	Observer actualises potential into instance
Consciousness triggers change	Consciousness construes actualised meaning
Observation reveals properties	Observation selects and transforms relational potential
Observer is detached	Observer is a situated, embodied field of relational systems
Collapse is physical	Collapse is material actualisation, framed by semiotic systems