1 Resonant Attractors — Toward a General Theory of Patterned Becoming
From Newtonian force to Einsteinian curvature, from entropy to evolution, and from biological individuation to conscious awareness — we have traced a single, resonant theme: the world is not made of things, but of relations, structured as patterned processes of actualisation. With this post, we begin to draw these threads together into a unified vision.
What emerges is not a theory of parts and causes, but a theory of patterned becoming — where potential is structured, constraint is formative, and actualisation is always semiotic.
1. From Cause to Constraint: The Architectonics of Potential
Traditional causality explains events by invoking prior events as their causes — like a row of dominoes toppling forward. But in each domain we’ve explored, this linear picture gives way to something richer: causation as the unfolding of structured potential within a field of constraint.
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In physics, force is no longer an independent cause but a deviation shaped by geometry (Einstein) or a possibility collapsed by measurement (quantum theory).
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In thermodynamics, entropy is not destruction, but directionality — a patterning of what can still happen.
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In evolution, change is driven not by force alone, but by the selection and retention of viable novelty under environmental constraint.
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In consciousness, experience is shaped by systems of meaning potential, instantiated in context, not merely triggered by inputs.
In each case, it is not simply that X causes Y, but that given these constraints, this actualisation becomes possible — and among the possible, some attract.
2. Resonant Attractors: The Pull of Patterned Possibility
If potential is structured, then some configurations are more likely to be actualised than others. These configurations form what we might call resonant attractors: patterned states or trajectories toward which systems tend, not because they are forced, but because they resonate with the structure of the system’s constraints.
These attractors are:
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Resonant because they fit with the patterned constraints of the system (e.g. physical laws, biological fitness landscapes, social norms, or grammatical structures).
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Attractors because they shape the likelihood of actualisation — not by pushing, but by pulling, as possibilities that are structurally favoured.
A falling object “seeks” the Earth not by a metaphysical force, but by moving through a relational geometry. A child “learns” a language not by algorithmic instruction, but by aligning to the attractors in the semiotic system around them.
3. Actualisation as Semiotic Process
At the heart of this model lies a key insight: every actualisation is semiotic. That is, it is the instantiation of systemic potential under contextual constraint. Meaning is not added to the world — it is how the world becomes.
This holds across scales:
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In quantum physics, a particle’s location becomes actual only in relation to a measurement context — a semiotic relation in which potential becomes instance.
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In biology, morphogenesis is the actualisation of developmental potential through intercellular signalling — a material semiotics.
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In mind, thought is the actualisation of semiotic potential shaped by neurobiological, cultural, and experiential systems.
Thus, reality is not a brute fact, but a structured becoming — a patterned collapse of possibility into presence, guided by meaning-bearing constraints.
4. Causation Without Causalism
This ontology offers a non-reductive, non-mechanistic account of causation. It affirms the reality of pattern and the directional logic of emergence — without resorting to determinism or mystical teleology.
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Causation is not force but form — the structuring of what becomes possible.
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Constraint is not limitation but scaffolding — the shaping of actualisation.
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Emergence is not magic but resonance — the alignment of potential with patterned systems.
We might summarise: Force is how potential feels from within a system constrained to become.
5. Worlds Within Meaning
This brings us full circle. If the universe is relational, and if relation is structured as potential-to-instance, then what we call the "physical" is already semiotic. Not in the sense of being made of words — but in the sense of being structured as systems of patterned actualisation.
Our world is not made of matter alone, nor of mind alone, but of meaning in motion — not imposed by observers, but enacted through relational processes. Meaning does not float above reality; it forms reality, wherever potential meets patterned constraint.
Looking Ahead
With this relational ontology in place, we are now poised to explore its broader implications — for science, for philosophy, and for how we understand ourselves as participants in a universe of patterned becoming.
In the next post, we’ll reflect on what it means to do science within this ontology: not as a search for fundamental particles or causes, but as a mapping of systemic potentials and semiotic patterns — a way of listening to the resonances of reality itself.
2 Listening to Resonance — Science as the Mapping of Patterned Potential
If reality is not a closed system of objects and causes, but a field of patterned potential, then the task of science is transformed. Rather than reducing the world to mechanisms and matter, science becomes a semiotic practice: a way of attuning to how systems resonate, how patterns constrain, and how potential unfolds.
This post explores the implications of our unified relational ontology for the practice of science itself.
1. Science as a Semiotic Activity
Science is often portrayed as a neutral method for discovering objective truths about the physical world. But from a relational perspective, science is better understood as a symbolic system: a semiotic order that evolves as it models the patterned regularities of becoming.
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Scientific concepts are not objective labels but symbolic construals — they shape, not merely describe, the phenomena they track.
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Measurement is not passive observation but structured instantiation — it selects among potentialities in relation to systemic constraints.
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Explanation is not about efficient causes but relational resonance — it shows how a phenomenon is patterned by the constraints of its system.
Science, then, is a way of mapping the resonance spaces of reality: the zones of constrained possibility that structure what becomes.
2. From Laws to Landscapes
A Newtonian worldview sought timeless, universal laws that govern motion and change. But in a relational ontology, laws become structural features of potential spaces — constraints on what can unfold, not commands for what must.
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Einstein replaced gravitational force with geometric curvature — a structural field.
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Quantum mechanics replaces causal certainty with probabilistic amplitude — a potential field.
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Evolutionary biology explains change not by law, but by selection landscapes — adaptive constraints on becoming.
What unites these is not law, but landscape — structured possibility spaces where resonant actualisations emerge.
3. Models as Metaphenomena
In this framework, scientific models are not mirrors of the world but metaphenomena — symbolic systems that instantiate meanings about meaning.
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A model represents not just “what is” but how what is becomes.
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The value of a model lies not in its correspondence to things, but in its coherence within a system of patterned constraints.
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Competing models may not be rivals, but alternative construals of the same space of potential — each highlighting different resonant structures.
Science thus becomes a reflexive semiotic practice: it models not only the phenomena but also its own role in their actualisation.
4. Objectivity as Shared Attunement
From this view, objectivity is not detachment from meaning but shared resonance within a symbolic system.
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Scientists agree not because they are free of subjectivity, but because they are attuned to common patterns in the construal of experience.
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Experiments are replicable not because nature is mechanical, but because the symbolic and material constraints are shared.
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Theory-building is fruitful not when it eliminates ambiguity, but when it clarifies the structure of potential — making the resonant attractors more explicit.
Truth is not correspondence to an external world of facts, but alignment with the structured becoming of the world.
5. Reclaiming Wonder
Perhaps most importantly, this ontology offers a vision of science as a poetics of the real. In place of a disenchanted mechanism, it reveals:
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A universe of emergent form, not frozen law.
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A world where meaning arises through relation, not supervenes upon matter.
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A cosmos not as a finished object, but as a living potential, always in the process of becoming.
Science, then, is not the enemy of wonder but its most refined form: a listening to the resonances of reality — not in pursuit of control, but in reverence for the patterned play of potential.
Looking Ahead
In the final posts of this series, we will draw together our relational ontology with broader philosophical and semiotic questions. What is it to be a knower in such a universe? What is the role of language, culture, and myth in structuring how we make meaning of becoming? And how might science and the humanities join forces in this wider endeavour?
3 Knowing in a Relational Cosmos — The Semiotic Self and the Patterning of Meaning
If the universe is a dynamic field of relational potential, then knowing is not the passive reception of information from a pre-structured world. It is an act of semiotic resonance — the alignment of meaning potential within a meaning system. To know is to instantiate significance from the patterned field of what could become.
In this post, we explore the implications of our relational ontology for consciousness, knowing, and the role of the self as a semiotic node within the cosmos.
1. From Cognition to Construal
In the classical view, cognition is internal representation — a mapping of external reality by internal structures. But in a relational ontology:
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Knowing is not representation but construal — the selective structuring of experience through meaning systems.
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The knower is not a container of knowledge but a locus of instantiation — a point where patterned potential is made actual through symbolic systems.
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What is known is not objective in itself, but realised in relation to the knower’s symbolic affordances.
Knowledge, then, is not stored but enacted — an unfolding event in a relational field.
2. The Self as Semiotic Organism
In evolutionary and neurobiological terms, the human self is not a fixed identity but a dynamic patterning system — a semiotic organism.
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Edelman’s Theory of Neuronal Group Selection reveals a brain not wired like a computer but tuned like a resonant network, selecting patterns from the flux of potential input.
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Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics frames language not as a code, but as a meaning potential — the system by which humans construe experience and enact social being.
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Together, they present a model of selfhood as the coalescence of resonant patterns — shaped by biological constraints, cultural systems, and the history of individual actualisations.
The self is not the subject of meaning but its semiotic unfolding.
3. Language as a Meta-System of Construal
Language, from this view, is not a tool for expressing pre-formed thought but the very medium of thought itself — the symbolic infrastructure by which patterns of potential are made actual.
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It structures experience into meaningful configurations — clause, process, participant, circumstance.
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It offers choices within systems — what to say, how to say it, from what stance — that realise not just information, but perspective, value, and relation.
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Meaning is not derived from words alone but from their instantiation within a contextually constrained system.
To speak is to enact a construal of the world; to mean is to instantiate a possibility within a patterned symbolic order.
4. Consciousness as Patterned Actualisation
If knowing is a semiotic process, then consciousness is not an epiphenomenon of neural activity but a field of pattern enactment:
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It is structured by systems of potential construal — biological, social, linguistic.
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It is layered — with levels of awareness, from instinctual reactivity to reflexive symbolic abstraction.
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It is relational — emerging in dialogue with others, with cultural systems, and with the semiotic structures we inherit.
To be conscious is to be enmeshed in meaning, an unfolding act of symbolic resonance within a system of potentiality.
5. The World Within Meaning
In this light, reality is not a substrate that we interpret. It is itself a system of symbolic potential — a cosmos that becomes through meaning.
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The material world offers not brute facts but structured affordances for meaning.
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Semiotic systems (language, gesture, ritual, myth) are not secondary but constitutive of reality — they shape what becomes thinkable, sayable, and knowable.
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Science, art, and myth are not separate domains but different orientations to this patterned field — different ways of listening to the becoming of being.
We do not merely live in a universe. We live in worlds within meaning.
Looking Ahead
In the final post of this series, we will step back and trace the arc we have drawn: from the reconceptualisation of force to a relational cosmos of resonance, constraint, and potential. We will reflect on the implications not just for science or philosophy, but for how we live, relate, and imagine futures — within a universe that is not given, but always giving itself into meaning.
4 The Pattern That Connects — Living, Knowing, and Becoming in a Relational Universe
What began as a rethinking of force has led us through the terrains of physics, thermodynamics, biology, and consciousness — all reframed through a unified relational ontology. In this final post, we gather the threads and reflect on the deeper vision they weave: a cosmos that is not a machine of parts in motion, but a field of becoming — patterned, potential, and resonant.
1. From Force to Relation
We began by questioning the classical notion of force as a push or pull between discrete entities. Through Newton, Einstein, and quantum theory, we reinterpreted force as:
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Patterned deviation from equilibrium (Newton)
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Relational curvature of spacetime (Einstein)
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Collapse of potential through observation (Quantum theory)
Force, in this view, is not external compulsion but internal transformation — an expression of the patterned unfolding of relational potential.
2. From Entropy to Possibility
Thermodynamics, once seen as the march toward disorder, was reframed not as decay, but as directionality — the transformation of potential into structure:
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Entropy signals not the end of order, but the expansion of constraints within which order can emerge.
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Dissipation is not the loss of meaning, but the precondition for its renewal — a clearing that allows new patternings to arise.
The arrow of time is not imposed; it is construed through the asymmetries of relational actualisation.
3. From Evolution to Emergence
Biological evolution was reimagined not as selection among fixed traits, but as the differentiation of potential:
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Life is not the replication of forms but the resonant unfolding of viable patterns.
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Complexity emerges where constraints are finely balanced, where systems are neither frozen nor chaotic.
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Evolution is not a march toward progress, but a dance of relational becoming — life tuning itself to what the world affords.
Organisms are not survivors of chance but participants in possibility.
4. From Consciousness to Construal
Knowing, too, was reframed — not as representation but as semiotic resonance:
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The self is a node in the semiotic cosmos — a pattern of patterns that construes patterns.
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Consciousness is not a mirror of reality, but a field of actualisation through symbolic systems.
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To know is to instantiate significance within the patterned constraints of one’s biology, culture, and language.
Meaning is not derived from things; it is how things become.
5. A Universe of Semiotic Potential
Through all of this runs a single current: the universe is not made of things, but of relations — not governed by forces, but by patterns of possibility.
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What becomes real is what becomes construed — through systems of meaning that unfold from within the field.
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The cosmos is not a container of meaning; it is a semiotic organism — a universe that knows itself through the instantiations of its patterns.
Reality is not the opposite of meaning. Reality is meaning — enacted, constrained, and always becoming.
Coda: Living in a Relational Cosmos
This is not only a scientific or philosophical vision. It is an invitation to live differently:
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To see the world not as object but as partner in becoming.
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To treat others not as entities, but as nodes of potential within a shared field of meaning.
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To act not by imposing will, but by resonating with what could become — attuned to pattern, to context, to possibility.
In a relational cosmos, life is not something we have. It is something we enact — together, moment by moment, world within world, meaning within meaning.