15 System in Motion: How Semiotic Potential Evolves

 (Post 15 in “Reflexive Matter: Relational Ontology and the Physics of Meaning”)

If collective construal draws from a shared semiotic system, then that system must be capable of change. For the world we share is not static — it evolves. New meanings emerge, old ones recede, and what was once unthinkable becomes commonplace. But how does a semiotic system evolve?

In a reflexive ontology, change is not imposed from without. It emerges from the system's own dynamic potential — from the interplay of instances and the system they instantiate, from the pressures of coordination and the tensions of construal.

Let us explore how this movement unfolds.

Potential Is Never Fixed

The semiotic system is not a closed set of rules. It is a structured potential — a field of possibilities that constrains and enables what can be meant. Each instance of meaning actualises part of this potential, but also perturbs it — refracting existing patterns, creating new pathways, drawing fresh distinctions.

Crucially, this means the system is always in motion. Each instance does not merely reflect the system — it also nudges it. Over time, the cumulative effect of these nudges reshapes the potential itself.

This is not teleology. There is no external goal or direction. It is reflexive drift — evolution through tension, construal, and realignment.

Novelty as Reconfiguration

Novelty does not arrive as something alien. It emerges from within the system, through reconfiguration: a new cut across existing possibilities, a novel alignment of patterns, a fresh construal of the familiar.

This is especially evident in metaphor, genre innovation, and social transformation. These are not the breaking of rules, but the re-weighting of systemic potentials — making salient what was once peripheral, backgrounding what was once canonical.

Importantly, the system can only evolve because it is reflexive. It construes its own instances, monitors its own patterns, and adapts to its own perturbations.

Meaning as History in Motion

To speak of system evolution, then, is to speak of meaning as history in motion. Every act of meaning is situated within a temporally unfolding system, shaped by past construals and shaping future ones.

This means that meaning is not only social — it is historical. It inherits, adapts, and transforms. And it does so through the very acts of construal that instantiate it.

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In the next post, we will ask: if the system evolves through its instances, how do those instances remain coordinated? What anchors alignment in the face of drift? Stay tuned for “Stability in Flow: Constraint, Coordination, and the Semiotic Spiral.”