The Architecture Of Possibility

Monday, 22 September 2025

Myth as Construal, Part 4: Myth as Collective Method

Having explored myths, archetypes, and their evolution, we now see how myth functions as a method of collective construal. Myths are not merely stories or cultural artefacts; they are architectures that shape relational possibility at scale.

Myth as collective method

Myths organise symbolic potential across communities, guiding perception, interpretation, and action.
They embed relational patterns that allow collectives to align construals across time and space.
By doing so, myths serve as tools for social coordination, making possible actions and futures more intelligible and actionable.

Linking back to theory and method

Series 1: From Meaning to Matter showed the relational ontology that underlies all construal.
Series 2: Ontologies in Action illustrated how this ontology plays out in ethics, science, and social formation.
Series 3: Reflexivity of Method made explicit the methodological moves — cuts, potential/instance, and reflexivity — that allow us to navigate reality relationally.
Series 4: Myth as Construal shows how symbolic systems are themselves methods instantiated at the collective level, extending the relational logic of ontology and method into culture and imagination.

Myths as living, evolving architectures

Myths are never fixed. They adapt, integrate new possibilities, and preserve relational alignment across generations. They are a handbook for collective action, a repository of potential actualised through social practice. In this sense, myths are both guides and participants in the evolution of possibility.

Implications for relational thinking

Myth highlights how symbolic, social, and cultural dimensions of reality are inseparable from relational ontology.
By seeing myths as methods, we can trace how knowledge, values, and meaning emerge and propagate in collective life.
This completes the conceptual arc: from theory, to practice, to reflexive method, to symbolic architecture — showing how relational thinking operates from the micro to the macro, from individual construals to collective imagination.

With this, the Myth as Construal series concludes. Together with the previous three series, it provides a cohesive, scalable, and reflexive framework for understanding reality, method, and symbolic possibility through the lens of relational ontology.

Myth as Construal, Part 3: The Evolution of Symbolic Possibility

If myths and archetypes are methods of construal at scale, then their power lies not in rigidity, but in adaptability. The evolution of symbolic possibility shows how relational alignment, cultural context, and individual interpretation coalesce over time.

Myths as living frameworks

Myths are not static stories preserved unchanged across generations. They are living frameworks, continually re-construed as societies, communities, and individuals negotiate meaning. Every retelling, every adaptation, is a cut into potential, shaping what is actualised and what remains latent.

Interaction of individual and collective

The evolution of symbolic possibility depends on the interplay between:

Individual interpretation — the construals each person makes within the mythic field.
Collective patterning — the broader archetypal and cultural structures that maintain coherence and alignment.

This interplay ensures that myths are simultaneously flexible and stabilising: flexible enough to accommodate new contexts, stabilising enough to sustain shared meaning and coordination.

Adaptation and innovation

New social conditions, technologies, and ideas introduce novel possibilities into the symbolic field.
Myths and archetypes evolve to incorporate these possibilities, maintaining alignment while opening new potential.
Symbolic evolution mirrors relational ontology itself: reality as possibility-in-motion, shaped through ongoing actualisation and alignment.

Implications

Myths are dynamic participants in cultural evolution, not passive reflections of the world.
Understanding their evolution reveals how collective construals emerge, adapt, and propagate.
Relational method allows us to trace these dynamics, showing how symbolic structures both shape and are shaped by social life.

The final post in this series will synthesise these insights, showing how myth functions as a collective method of construal, linking back to theory, practice, and reflexive method, and preparing the way for further explorations of symbolic architecture.

Myth as Construal, Part 2: Archetypes and Alignment

Building on the idea that myths are methods for construal at scale, we now turn to archetypes: recurring symbolic forms that guide collective alignment across cultures and generations.

Archetypes as relational patterns

An archetype is not a fixed character or plot but a pattern of relational alignment. It defines roles, possibilities, and interactions, offering a template for how events, actors, and meanings can be organised. Archetypes allow individuals to navigate potentialities while contributing to the coherence of the collective symbolic system.

Guiding but not determining

Archetypes guide construals without dictating them. They are flexible structures, allowing variation and adaptation while maintaining recognizable relational patterns. For example:

Hero figures guide the emergence of courage, risk-taking, and transformation.
Trickster figures guide the navigation of ambiguity, subversion, and relational tension.
Mother or nurturing figures guide care, cohesion, and relational stability.

These patterns do not prescribe actions in a deterministic way; they provide frameworks for actualising potential, influencing how people align with each other and with the symbolic field.

Alignment across scales

Archetypes operate at multiple levels simultaneously:

Individually, they shape personal construals and choices.
Collectively, they coordinate social expectations, rituals, and narratives.
Symbolically, they structure the evolution of myths over time.

This multi-scale coordination ensures that certain relational possibilities remain open while guiding the enactment of others, producing a dynamic, evolving architecture of meaning.

Implications for method

Understanding archetypes relationally illuminates how symbolic forms function as collective methods of construal. It shows that the evolution of possibility is not just cognitive or social, but also cultural and symbolic, mediated through shared patterns that sustain and channel relational alignment.

The next post will explore the evolution of symbolic possibility, tracing how myths and archetypes adapt over time in response to changing relational configurations.

Myth as Construal, Part 1: Myth as Method: Construal at Scale

If relational ontology shows that reality is the evolution of possibility, then myths and collective symbols can be understood as tools for managing and shaping that possibility. They are not mere stories or reflections of reality; they are methods for construal at scale.

Myths as relational architectures

A myth is a symbolic system that structures potential across a community or culture. Just as a clause complex structures potential meanings in language, myths organise relations, roles, and pathways through the space of possibility. They guide how people construe the world, themselves, and their interactions, aligning perspectives across time and social scales.

Method in symbolic form

Relational ontology treats method as reflexive: cuts, perspectives, and system/instance dynamics are not just cognitive moves but practical operations in reality. Myths externalise these operations, embedding relational principles in symbolic form. In this sense, myths are living methods, rehearsed and transmitted through story, ritual, and cultural practice.

Scale and coordination

While an individual can make a perspectival cut in a single event, myths operate across generations and collectives. They sustain potentialities that might otherwise be overlooked, and they guide collective alignment, ensuring that some possibilities are enacted while others remain latent.

Implications

Myths are not literal truth, but they are epistemically potent, shaping perception and behaviour.
They link individual construals to collective formation, bridging scales of possibility.
Understanding myths relationally allows us to see them as adaptive, evolving frameworks rather than fixed narratives.

By framing myth as a method of construal, we begin to see cultural symbols as active participants in the evolution of possibility. The next post will examine archetypes and alignment, exploring recurring symbolic forms as patterns of relational coordination that guide collective construals.

Reflexivity of Method, Part 4: A Handbook in Motion

If the previous posts explored cuts, potential/instance dynamics, and metareflection, this final post in the series turns outward: method as evolving, never fixed.

Method as a living practice

Rather than a static set of rules, relational method is a handbook in motion. It evolves as we construe, reflect, and align across contexts. Each act of construal adds to the living practice, while each metareflection revises and refines it. The handbook is never finished; it is continuously written through engagement with reality itself.

Linking theory and practice

This series has been both reflective and practical:

Series 1 (From Meaning to Matter) showed the theoretical foundation — reality as relational and potential-in-motion.
Series 2 (Ontologies in Action) demonstrated how relational ontology operates in practice, from education to ethics, science, and collective life.
Series 3 (Reflexivity of Method) foregrounds how we think and act relationally, making explicit the methodological moves that underlie theory and practice.

By situating method reflexively, we see how the act of thinking itself sustains possibility across scales.

Preparing for Myth as Construal

The final series, Myth as Construal, explores how collective symbols operate as methods of construal at scale. Stories, myths, and cultural symbols are not inert; they are architectures of relational alignment, guiding construals across generations. By practicing reflexive method now, we are equipped to see these symbolic forms not as fixed narratives but as dynamic, living construals that shape collective possibility.

The open handbook

This post — and the series as a whole — invites readers to treat method as an open, evolving practice. It encourages experimentation, alignment, and reflection, showing that relational thinking is not a set of procedures but a way of participating in reality itself.

Reflexivity of Method, Part 3: Metareflection: Construal of Construal

Every construal is already a perspective. But when we step back to construe the construal itself, we move into metareflection. This is not an optional add-on but a constitutive part of relational method.

Why metareflection matters

In a relational ontology, there is no “view from nowhere.” Every claim, every analysis, every description is itself an instance of construal. To take this seriously means recognising that method is not neutral but reflexively shaped by the very dynamics it studies.

Metareflection is the act of:

Turning cuts on cuts — seeing how our distinctions are themselves distinctions.
Perspectivising perspectives — recognising the choices behind the frames we adopt.
Tracking potential/instance dynamics in method itself — asking what range of possibilities our current construal opens up, and which it forecloses.

Layers of construal

We can think of metareflection in terms of layers:

First-order construal: making meaning, construing a phenomenon.
Second-order construal: construing how we construed, reflecting on method.
Third-order construal: construing the field of methods itself, comparing and contrasting perspectives.

Each layer is not a “higher” truth but a further cut in the potential. What matters is how they phase together to scaffold our practice of knowing.

Metareflection in practice

Metareflection does not mean endless doubt or paralysis. It is a disciplined practice of asking:

What cut have I made?
What alternative cuts were possible?
How do these construals open or limit the space of potential?
How do my construals align with those of others?

This keeps method alive, dynamic, and responsive — preventing it from hardening into dogma.

From reflection to reflexivity

Reflection can still imply a mirror image, as if there were a reality “out there” being reflected back. Reflexivity goes further: it recognises that our construals are part of reality itself. To construe is to participate in the architecture of possibility.

Implications

Method is always situated — shaped by social, symbolic, and experiential contexts.
Theory is always reflexive — a theory of meaning is itself a meaning, an instance of its own field.
Knowledge is never final — it is an evolving play of potential and instance, sustained through reflexive construal.

Reflexivity of Method, Part 2: Potential and Instance: Thinking in Scales

If cuts and perspectives describe the how of construal, the potential/instance dynamic describes the what. To construe is to move between structured potential and actualised instance — a movement that is not temporal but perspectival.

System as potential

A system is not an inventory of things, but a structured field of possible relations. Grammar is not a list of sentences but a theory of how sentences can be made. Quantum physics is not a list of particles but a structured possibility space for events. Social formations are not lists of individuals but potentials for coordinated action and symbolic alignment.

The system is a theory of the instance: a structured way of saying what could be.

Instance as actualisation

An instance is not a detached event but a cut across the potential. It is a way of actualising possibility into experience. The event is not outside the system; it is a perspective within it.

Crucially, this actualisation is not final or exhaustive. Each instance is one possible construal among many. The same potential can support different instantiations, depending on the cut.

Thinking in scales

Because systems and instances are relational, not absolute, they scale. What counts as an instance at one level may itself be the system for another:

A clause is an instance of grammar, but a system of choices for words.
A social event is an instance of a formation, but a potential for individual experiences.
A measurement in physics is an instance of quantum potential, but a system for further symbolic construal.

This scaling dynamic allows us to think relationally without collapsing into either reductionism (only the smallest level counts) or holism (only the largest level counts).

Implications for method

To think relationally is to ask: what system is this an instance of, and what instances could this system give rise to?
To navigate scales is to see how potentials and instances interlock — how construal at one level scaffolds construal at another.
To build theory is to refine our sense of these relations, not to discover an ultimate level.

A methodological shift

Traditional methods often search for the “basic units” of reality — atoms, morphemes, individuals. In a relational ontology, there are no units outside of the potential/instance dynamic. What matters is how structured possibility is actualised in perspective.

The next post will take us deeper into this method, turning to metareflection: how we construe our own construals, and how reflexivity itself is methodologically constitutive.

Reflexivity of Method, Part 1: Cuts and Perspectives: How Construal Works

At the heart of a relational ontology lies a simple but radical claim: reality is not given but construed. What we experience as “phenomena” come into being through cuts — perspectival shifts that actualise potential.

The cut as constitutive

A cut is not a passive observation. It is the act of drawing a boundary within a field of potential, producing an instance from a system. In physics, this appears in the role of measurement; in language, in how a clause complex selects and organises relations; in everyday life, whenever we frame a situation one way rather than another.

Without the cut, there is no phenomenon. There is only structured potential. The cut does not reveal reality; it constitutes reality-in-perspective.

Perspectives, not absolutes

Every cut is perspectival. It is one way of carving the potential, but never the only way. The same system can support multiple construals, depending on where the cut is made. This means that “reality” is inherently plural — not in the sense of multiple disconnected worlds, but in the sense that actuality is always perspectival actualisation of shared potential.

Implications for method

To think relationally is to attend to the cuts we make — and those we neglect.
To compare perspectives is not to decide which one is “true” in substance, but to explore how each aligns or misaligns with the structured potential it construes.
To innovate is to cut differently, finding new ways of actualising what could be.

A methodological shift

Much of philosophy and science has been dominated by the search for absolutes: entities, essences, foundations. By foregrounding cuts and perspectives, we shift from substance to relation, from absolutes to construal. This is not relativism, but a recognition that reality itself is possibility-in-motion, constituted through perspectival actualisation.

This opening reflection sets the stage for the series. In the next post, we will explore the system/instantiation dynamic more directly, showing how the relation between potential and instance provides a method for thinking across scales — from physics to language to social life.

Ontologies in Action, Part 4: Collective Action and Social Formation

If reality is the evolution of possibility, then social life is one of its most powerful sites of actualisation. Every collective — from a conversation to an institution — is an ongoing process of aligning construals, coordinating action, and sustaining possibility across scales.

From individuals to collectives

In a substance-based ontology, society is often imagined as a collection of individuals. In a relational ontology, collectives are not aggregates of substances but configurations of relational alignment. Individuals and collectives are two perspectives on the same evolving potential: the former highlighting differentiation, the latter integration.

Coordination as relational work

Social formation depends on coordinating construals — aligning how participants carve up potential into events and meanings. Value systems organise what matters, while symbolic systems provide the means for construal and alignment. The interplay of the two sustains collective life.

Phasing futures

Collective action is never static. It involves phasing construals over time, scaling from local interactions to global institutions. Each phase actualises some possibilities while holding others in reserve. Politics, culture, and economy can all be read as different architectures of possibility, structuring which futures remain open.

Agency as alignment

Agency, in this view, is not an attribute of isolated individuals but a property of relational configurations. What a collective can do depends on how construals are aligned and potentials are sustained. Power, then, is the capacity to open or foreclose futures through relational organisation.

The collective horizon

Social life is where the stakes of relational ontology become most tangible. It is here that possibility is most visibly expanded or constrained, often with consequences across generations. To understand society as possibility-in-motion is to see collective life not as fixed structures but as ongoing architectures of potential, open to transformation.

With this, the Ontologies in Action series concludes. From education to ethics, from science to collective life, the point has been consistent: a relational ontology reframes not only how we theorise, but how we live. It invites us to act as custodians of possibility, aligning construals in ways that keep futures open.

Ontologies in Action, Part 3: Science as Construal, Not Discovery

Science is often imagined as the uncovering of what already exists: the discovery of timeless facts about a pre-given reality. But in a relational ontology, this picture shifts. Science does not reveal objects waiting to be found; it construes possibilities within structured potential.

Theories as structured potentials

Just as in SFL, systems are networks of meaning potential, so too in science, theories function as networks of structured possibility. A physical theory does not merely describe what is, but maps out what could be. Its power lies in generating potential instances and guiding how phenomena can be construed.

Experiments as perspectival cuts

An experiment is not a passive window onto reality but an active cut into possibility. By arranging instruments, defining variables, and framing hypotheses, scientists carve a particular pathway through potential. What emerges is not an independently given phenomenon but an event of construal — one perspective on a larger space of possibility.

Science as a relational practice

From this view, science is less about correspondence with an external world and more about the coherence of construals. A scientific explanation is successful when it aligns construals across scales and contexts, allowing us to navigate and coordinate within the evolving network of potential.

Why this deepens science, not diminishes it

Some may worry that construing science in this way undermines its authority. In fact, the opposite is true. Recognising science as construal makes visible the creative, relational work that has always been central to its practice. It also situates science within the same ontology as meaning, ethics, and education: all are practices of opening, aligning, and actualising potential.

Science, then, is not discovery but systematic construal of possibility. Its strength lies not in uncovering immutable objects, but in mapping structured potential in ways that expand what can be known, done, and imagined.

The final post in this series will extend this logic into the collective domain, showing how relational ontology redefines social life and collective action as possibility-in-motion.

Ontologies in Action, Part 2: Ethics Without Substances

If ontology is relational rather than substance-based, then ethics too must be reconceived. Traditional ethical systems often assume that there are stable entities — individuals, actions, or essences — that can be weighed, judged, or codified. But if reality is the evolution of possibility, then ethics cannot be about substances. It must be about relations and the futures they open or foreclose.

From fixed rules to relational alignment

Ethics is not a set of timeless rules hovering above human life. Instead, it is about how our actions align or misalign relational potentials. Every act opens some possibilities while constraining others. Responsibility is measured not by fidelity to abstract laws but by attentiveness to how possibilities evolve through our choices.

Possibility as responsibility

If we accept that reality itself is the unfolding of potential, then every construal, every decision, every alignment participates in shaping that unfolding. To act ethically is to sustain and expand possibility — for oneself, for others, and for the collective. Conversely, to foreclose possibility irresponsibly is to diminish reality’s very scope of becoming.

Relational ethics in practice

Care is not about sentiment but about preserving the conditions under which others can actualise potential.
Justice is not about restoring balance between substances but about realigning construals so that collective futures remain open.
Integrity is not a property of an individual but the consistency with which one acts to sustain relational possibility across scales.

The ethical horizon

In a relational ontology, ethics is always forward-looking. It is less about adjudicating past actions than about nurturing futures. To live ethically is to act as a custodian of possibility: to keep open the pathways through which the collective can evolve.

In this way, ethics without substances is not a loss but a liberation. By grounding responsibility in relation and potential rather than in essence or rule, it becomes possible to act with clarity in a world that is never static, but always possibility-in-motion.

The next post will turn to science, showing how this relational ontology reframes its practices — not as the discovery of fixed truths, but as the systematic construal of potential.

Ontologies in Action, Part 1: Education as the Evolution of Possibility

If reality is understood as the evolution of possibility, then education must be reconceived in those terms as well. Rather than the transfer of fixed “knowledge objects,” education becomes a practice of opening, aligning, and expanding potential.

From transmission to construal

Traditional models of education often assume that knowledge is a substance: something teachers possess and students acquire. Within a relational ontology, this picture dissolves. Knowledge is not a thing but a system of potential meanings, instantiated through acts of construal. Teaching and learning are not about moving objects from one mind to another, but about guiding cuts into potential and aligning construals across participants.

Teachers as architects of possibility

In this view, teachers are not primarily transmitters but scaffolders of potential. Their work is to create environments where learners can construe differently, actualising possibilities that would otherwise remain dormant. Curriculum, assessment, and pedagogy are therefore relational architectures: frameworks that make certain construals more likely and others less likely.

Learning as perspectival expansion

Learning is the process by which learners become able to take different perspectival cuts into structured potential. Each new construal is not an accumulation of objects but an expansion of relational possibility. Education thus scales from the micro (individual shifts in meaning potential) to the macro (collective shifts in social formation).

Implications

Equity becomes a matter of ensuring access to potential — removing constraints that foreclose possibility.
Curriculum design becomes about sequencing relational potentials, not packaging inert content.
Assessment becomes about tracing how learners’ construals evolve, rather than measuring how many objects they have accumulated.

In this way, education, far from being a neutral process, becomes a central site where the evolution of possibility is shaped and contested. It is here that relational ontology takes on practical urgency: the futures that learners can enter depend on how well we understand education as possibility-in-action.

The next post will extend this logic into the realm of ethics, asking what it means to act responsibly in a world where reality is relational and potential is always at stake.

From Meaning to Matter, Part 4: Implications for Thought and Construal

Having traced the genealogy from Systemic Functional Linguistics to physics and articulated a relational ontology, we now turn to its implications for how we think, construe, and understand reality.

The central insight is that construal is constitutive of reality. In SFL, meaning is not a passive reflection but an active actualisation of potential. Extended into a relational ontology, this implies that our perception, cognition, and symbolic activity are part of the same network of actualising potential that gives rise to phenomena in physics, social systems, and collective symbolic formations.

Key implications:

Perspective shapes reality
Every act of construal — whether linguistic, cognitive, or practical — represents a perspectival cut into structured potential. Reality is not fully given independently of this cut; it emerges relationally through the choices and alignments we enact.
Thought as relational practice
Thinking is not merely an internal process; it is an engagement with the evolving network of possibility. By attending to relations rather than things, we can trace how potentials are constrained, actualised, and aligned across contexts.
Bridging domains
The same relational logic links quantum events, social interactions, and symbolic systems. Understanding this allows us to move seamlessly between domains — from the microphysical to the symbolic — while maintaining conceptual coherence.
Construal and innovation
By foregrounding potential and relationality, this ontology highlights opportunities for novel configurations. Creativity, problem-solving, and social innovation all emerge as actualisations of potentialities, guided by relational alignment rather than pre-existing substances.

In summary, the From Meaning to Matter series shows that SFL’s categories — systems, instantiation, and clause complexes — do more than illuminate language. When extended, they provide a unified framework for understanding reality itself as the evolution of possibility, guiding both how we think and how we act.

The next series, Ontologies in Action, will explore how these insights translate into practical, observable interventions across education, social coordination, ethics, and beyond, connecting theory to lived reality.

From Meaning to Matter, Part 3: Emergence of Relational Ontology

In the previous posts, we saw how Systemic Functional Linguistics models reality in terms of systems and instantiations, and how these concepts resonate with modern physics, where events emerge from fields of potential. In this post, we bring these threads together to articulate a relational ontology — a framework in which reality itself is understood as the evolution of possibility.

At the heart of this ontology is a simple but profound shift: instead of seeing the world as composed of static entities, we see it as a network of processes and relations. Systems represent structured potentials — the “space of possibility” — while instantiation represents perspectival cuts that actualise one outcome among many. In other words, what happens is always a actualisation of potential, not a revelation of a pre-existing thing.

This perspective has several key consequences:

Reality as the evolution of possibility
Every event, from a quantum interaction to a social decision, is a transformation of potential into actuality. Reality is not static; it unfolds dynamically as possibilities are actualised through relational processes.
Relational scaling
The same relational logic applies across domains. Quantum events, symbolic systems, and collective social formations can all be seen as instances of structured potentials being actualised. This gives the ontology a remarkable scalability: micro, meso, and macro phenomena are connected through the same underlying architecture.
Meaning and matter as intertwined
In this ontology, meaning is not separate from reality; it is a dimension of the relational processes that constitute reality. Language, thought, and social coordination are all actualisations of potential, just as physical events are.
The primacy of process over substance
By centring relations and processes, the ontology reframes traditional philosophical assumptions. “Things” are no longer foundational; relations between processes are. This shift is a direct inheritance from SFL’s treatment of the clause complex as the unit of relational meaning.

In short, the relational ontology that emerges from this genealogy is dynamic, scalable, and relational through and through. Reality is a living network of potentialities actualised over time — a framework that unites language, thought, and physical phenomena under a single conceptual architecture.

In the final post of this series, we will examine the implications of this relational ontology for thought, construal, and understanding, bridging the conceptual foundation to practical and reflective applications.

From Meaning to Matter, Part 2: Dialogue with Physics

In the first post, we saw how Systemic Functional Linguistics frames meaning in terms of potential and instance, and how clauses model relations between processes rather than static things. In this post, we explore how these insights resonate with the way modern physics describes reality.

In quantum theory and relativity, what we call “phenomena” are not fixed, independently given entities. Instead, their properties depend on perspective, measurement, and context — in other words, on relational processes. This mirrors the SFL distinction between systems (potential) and instantiation (actualised choice). Just as a clause instantiates one possibility from a system of choices, a physical event can be seen as a perspectival cut from a structured field of potential outcomes.

From this viewpoint, reality is a network of possibilities in continuous evolution. Quantum events, for example, are not predetermined “things” but actualisations from a spectrum of potentialities. Relativity, with its dependence on reference frames, further underscores the perspectival and relational nature of the world.

Applying SFL concepts here offers a conceptual bridge:

System → structured potential in physics (all possible outcomes constrained by laws and relations)
Instantiation → actualised event (the specific measurement, observation, or occurrence)
Clause complex → relational network (interconnected processes that give rise to events)

This dialogue reveals that SFL is not merely a tool for analysing language. Its architecture naturally extends into physics, providing a lens to understand reality as relational, processual, and emergent from potential. By thinking in these terms, we begin to see that meaning and matter are two sides of the same underlying relational logic.

In the next post, we will formalise this perspective as a relational ontology, showing how the evolution of possibility becomes a unifying principle linking language, physics, and reality itself.

From Meaning to Matter, Part 1: Origins in SFL

Systemic Functional Linguistics has always offered more than a framework for analysing language. At its core, it provides a way of thinking about how reality itself is construed. In this first post of From Meaning to Matter, we trace the conceptual roots that make SFL a natural springboard toward a relational ontology.

A key insight in SFL is the system/instantiation distinction. Systems are networks of potential — structured choices available in a domain of meaning. Instantiation is the actualisation of these potentials: the choices made, the events that occur, the clauses that are actualised. In other words, systems describe what could happen, while instances are what does happen.

Another foundational insight is the clause complex. In SFL, clauses are not isolated units; they are always connected in sequences, expressing relations between processes, participants, and circumstances. This shifts attention away from things as the primary units of meaning, and toward relations between processes.

Taken together, these concepts reveal a remarkable possibility: SFL equips us to model reality itself as relational and processual. Rather than beginning with static entities, we can think in terms of networks of potential, actualised through perspectival cuts. Meaning emerges relationally, and the structures we observe in language provide a blueprint for how we might understand other domains, including physics and the material world.

In the next post, we will explore how these SFL insights extend into quantum theory and relativity, and how thinking in terms of potential and instance illuminates phenomena in physics as construed, relational, and evolving.

The Architecture of Possibility: Opening Worlds Within Worlds

Welcome to this blog, where we explore reality as the evolution of possibility through a relational lens. Across four interconnected series, we investigate how meaning, matter, method, and myth converge in a single theoretical and practical framework.

Series 1: From Meaning to Matter

This series establishes the foundation: reality is not a collection of things, but a network of relations. Drawing on Systemic Functional Linguistics, we show how the system/instantiation dynamic allows us to see reality itself as structured potential, with instances emerging through perspectival cuts.

Series 2: Ontologies in Action

Here, theory meets practice. We explore how relational ontology operates across domains — from science to ethics, from education to collective social formations. The focus is on how possibility is actualised in the world, showing that everything from events to institutions can be read as relationally aligned instances of potential.

Series 3: Reflexivity of Method (Practising Construal)

This series turns inward, reflecting on how we think and act relationally. It introduces a living, evolving method: cuts, potential/instance dynamics, and reflexive construal. By treating method itself as an open handbook, we see that thinking relationally is itself a practice that sustains possibility across scales.

Series 4: Myth as Construal

Finally, we explore symbolic architectures — myths, archetypes, and cultural narratives — as methods of collective construal. Myths organise relational potential across generations, aligning individual and collective perspectives and guiding the evolution of social and symbolic possibility.

Why “Opening Worlds Within Worlds”?

Each series is a lens on the same fundamental insight: reality is possibility-in-motion, and our understanding, methods, and symbols are part of the ongoing architecture of that possibility. From the micro-level of cuts and clause complexes to the macro-level of collective myths, we trace how relational alignment structures the unfolding of the world.

This blog is intended as a living, reflective resource: each post offers not just ideas, but ways of thinking, acting, and interpreting that can be applied across domains. Together, the four series offer a comprehensive framework for exploring the evolution of possibility — a relational ontology in practice, method, and symbol.