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:
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A clause is an instance of grammar, but a system of choices for words.
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A social event is an instance of a formation, but a potential for individual experiences.
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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
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To think relationally is to ask: what system is this an instance of, and what instances could this system give rise to?
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To navigate scales is to see how potentials and instances interlock — how construal at one level scaffolds construal at another.
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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.
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