Showing posts with label reality. Show all posts

01 August 2025

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.

30 July 2025

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.

28 July 2025

Relational Ontology and the Phenomenon of Black Holes

1 Into the Horizon: Black Holes as Relational Boundaries

Black holes are often described as mysterious “objects” in space — regions where gravity crushes matter into a singularity, and nothing, not even light, can escape. But what if we set aside the notion of black holes as things and instead think of them as extreme configurations of relational unfolding? What if the event horizon is not just a physical boundary, but a boundary of relational coherence and meaning?

In this post, we begin a relational exploration of black holes — not by asking what they are in themselves, but how they unfold as processes within the complex interplay of space, time, and observation.

1. Beyond “Things”: Black Holes as Processes of Relation

Traditional physics often treats black holes as entities with properties — mass, density, event horizons — existing in an absolute spacetime backdrop. Our relational ontology suggests a shift: black holes are not static “things” but dynamic, unfolding processes defined by their relational interactions.

They arise as boundary conditions where the potential for co-unfolding relational processes between observer and observed reaches a limit. This is not merely a boundary of physics but a boundary of meaningful relational interaction.

2. The Event Horizon: A Boundary of Relational Coherence

The event horizon is commonly seen as the “point of no return” — a surface beyond which events cannot influence distant observers. Relationally, the event horizon can be understood as a meaning boundary, a limit of relational synchrony:

From the perspective of an external observer, processes unfolding inside the horizon cease to co-unfold relationally with the outside.
The horizon is not an absolute wall in space, but a perspectival, dynamic limit shaped by how processes relate and unfold across gravitational potentials.
It marks where the topology of relational meaning breaks or transforms — a shift in what can be instantiated as meaningful interaction.

3. Relational Implications of Space Contraction and Time Dilation

Near the event horizon, spatial intervals contract while time intervals dilate — processes unfold at different rates depending on gravitational potential. Relationally, this means:

The unfolding of events inside the horizon is effectively “compressed” relative to an external frame.
Time itself becomes a perspectival dimension of unfolding, slowing dramatically as the horizon is approached.
From afar, instantiations appear to pile up at the horizon, reflecting the horizon’s role as a temporal asymptote — a relational boundary limiting how and when events can be instantiated.

4. The Black Hole as an Extreme Individuation of Gravitational Potential

Black holes can also be seen as extreme individuations where localized gravitational potential dominates all relational unfolding with the wider cosmos. In this sense:

They represent regions where the internal relational processes become so dominant that interaction with the outside relational field becomes constrained or altered.
This extreme individuation reshapes the meaning potential and the ways processes can instantiate meaning within and outside the horizon.

Conclusion: A New Beginning Beyond the Horizon

By reframing black holes as relational boundaries — sites where the interplay of unfolding processes, meaning, and observation reaches a limit — we begin to see these phenomena not as paradoxical singularities but as natural limits of relational coherence.

This view invites us to explore not what black holes are, but how they unfold relationally — paving the way for further reflections on singularities and time’s ontological limits in the next posts of this trilogy.

2 Singularity and the Breakdown of Relational Meaning

In the first post, Into the Horizon, we reframed black holes not as static objects but as relational boundaries where the coherence of unfolding processes reaches a limit. Now, we turn our attention inward — to the singularity, traditionally portrayed as a point of infinite density and a breakdown of physical law.

What does the singularity mean in a relational ontology? If reality is meaning unfolding through processes, then singularities are not “things” but zones where relational meaning itself breaks down — where the topology of spacetime can no longer sustain coherent instantiation of process.

1. The Singularity as a Breakdown of Relational Coherence

The classical singularity in black hole physics is often seen as a “point” where density and curvature become infinite, signalling the failure of our physical models. From a relational perspective:

The singularity marks a limit in the meaningful unfolding of processes.
It is a breakdown in the topology of relational fields, where the relational potential for co-unfolding fails.
This failure is not a physical “thing” but a loss of instantiable meaning, a boundary to how relational processes can meaningfully proceed.

2. Rethinking “Infinity” in Relational Terms

Infinity in physics is often a signpost of theory breakdown, not an actual physical state. Here:

Infinite density or curvature is understood as a signal of relational breakdown, not a material reality.
It flags where the processual instantiations we use to understand reality lose coherence or applicability.
This invites us to rethink singularities as ontological limits rather than physical points, thresholds beyond which relational meaning cannot unfold as before.

3. Topology, Individuation, and Meaning Collapse

Within the black hole, the spacetime topology that allows for the unfolding of meaningful relations compresses and contorts:

The internal field becomes an extreme individuation of gravitational potential.
The “collapse” of meaning is a consequence of this extreme individuation, where the relational “space” for interaction shrinks beyond instantiation.
The singularity is thus a zone of meaning collapse, a boundary where the relational process of meaning construction reaches an ontological limit.

4. Implications for Understanding Reality and Observation

This relational reframing offers new ways to think about observation and reality at the edge of singularities:

Observation is itself a relational unfolding, reliant on the co-presence and co-unfolding of processes.
Near the singularity, the breakdown of relational coherence means observation, and thus meaning, is fundamentally altered or ceases.
This aligns with quantum gravitational intuitions that classical notions of space and time lose their meaning near singularities.

Conclusion: Singularities as Limits, Not Paradoxes

By interpreting singularities as breakdowns of relational meaning and topology, rather than physical infinities, we demystify these extreme conditions and align them with our broader relational ontology.

This sets the stage for the next post, Time Folds In: Gravitational Asymptotes and Ontological Limits, where we explore how time itself behaves as an unfolding process near these ultimate relational boundaries.

3 Time Folds In: Gravitational Asymptotes and Ontological Limits

In our previous posts, Into the Horizon and Singularity and the Breakdown of Relational Meaning, we explored black holes as relational boundaries—zones where the unfolding of relational processes and meaning reaches fundamental limits. Now, we turn to the role of time, the dimension of unfolding, as it behaves in the presence of extreme gravitational fields.

1. Time as the Dimension of Unfolding Processes

In our relational ontology, time is not an independent container but the dimension of processual unfolding itself—how instances actualise from potential in relation. It is fundamentally perspectival and emergent from co-unfolding processes.

Near a black hole’s event horizon, this unfolding slows dramatically from the perspective of an external observer, but what does this mean relationally?

2. Gravitational Asymptotes: Processes Slowing to a Standstill

Approaching the event horizon, gravitational potential warps the relational topology:

The unfolding of processes contracts in time and space intervals relative to distant observers.
From afar, processes appear to slow and asymptotically approach a halt at the horizon—an ontological boundary where relational instantiation becomes frozen.
This “freezing” is not a universal cessation but a perspectival effect of relative unfolding rates between interacting processes.

3. The Black Hole as a Temporal Boundary Condition

The black hole thus acts as a temporal asymptote, a boundary condition limiting the relational unfolding of process:

Instantiations—events, interactions—“pile up” near the horizon without fully crossing it in external time.
Internally, however, unfolding continues differently; the horizon is a boundary between relational regimes, not an absolute end.
This reframes the event horizon as a meaning boundary, delimiting where certain relational processes can co-unfold coherently.

4. Ontological Limits and the Folding of Time

At the singularity, where relational meaning breaks down, time itself encounters an ontological limit:

The familiar metric of unfolding time collapses with the breakdown of spatial and processual topology.
Time “folds in” — ceasing to serve as a meaningful dimension of relational instantiation.
This invites new ways of thinking about quantum gravity and the fabric of reality where classical time dissolves into relational potential.

5. Observational Perspectives and the Nature of Reality

This perspectival unfolding emphasises that observation and reality are relationally co-constructed:

Time dilation near black holes is not just physical but ontological—reflecting differences in relational co-unfolding between observers and phenomena.
Reality, as meaning unfolding through processes, is fundamentally linked to these perspectival relations.
This aligns black hole physics with our broader relational ontology, dissolving paradoxes by grounding them in process and relation.

Conclusion: Time’s Edge and the Horizon of Meaning

The black hole horizon is not a mere physical barrier but a profound boundary of relational unfolding and meaning—where time folds, processes compress, and ontological limits emerge.

This relational reimagining deepens our understanding of black holes, not as isolated singularities or objects, but as dynamic horizons of relation, marking the edges of coherent process and temporal meaning.

Reflective Coda: Horizons of Relation and the Unfolding of Meaning

Through this trilogy, we have journeyed beyond conventional notions of black holes as mere physical objects or singularities. Instead, we have reframed them as extreme configurations of relational unfolding, boundaries where the interplay of time, space, process, and meaning approaches profound limits.

The event horizon emerges not as a fixed frontier but as a dynamic boundary of coherence—a perspectival edge defining where relational processes can synchronise and unfold meaningfully. The singularity is not a point of infinite density but a signal of the breakdown of relational topology and meaningful instantiation.

Most strikingly, time itself reveals its fluid, perspectival nature as it folds near these horizons. This invites us to reconsider our deepest assumptions about temporality, causality, and the nature of reality—not as static entities, but as unfolding processes shaped by relation.

By embracing this relational ontology, black holes transform from paradoxical curiosities into profound illustrations of how meaning, process, and reality intertwine at the limits of experience. They invite us to rethink physics, not in terms of isolated ‘things,’ but in terms of relations, boundary conditions, and the unfolding dance of potential and instance.

As we close this exploration, the horizon remains open—an invitation to further inquiry into how relational processes sculpt not only the cosmos but the very fabric of meaning itself.

26 July 2025

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.