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:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.