9 Fields of Meaning: Reframing Quantum Field Theory through Relational Ontology

 (Post 9 in “Reflexive Matter: Relational Ontology and the Physics of Meaning”)

In quantum field theory (QFT), the basic constituents of the universe are not particles but fields — dynamic, fluctuating continuities that span spacetime. Particles emerge as excitations of these fields: ripples, localised events, or quantised disturbances in otherwise continuous systems.

This is a dramatic ontological shift from the classical worldview, and even from the early quantum mechanical one. But it also invites a deeper question: if the world is fundamentally fields, then what is a field, in relational terms? What kind of system is it? What kind of cut does it support?

Fields as Systems of Potential

In relational ontology, a field is not a substance or a thing-in-itself. It is a structured potential — a system of possible actualisations. What we perceive as a “particle” is an instance of that potential: a phase-shifted, actualised construal that depends on the conditions of interaction, measurement, and co-instantiation.

Fields, then, are theories of the instance. They do not predict what is in a static sense, but define what can be construed as a coherent event within a space of relational possibility. The Higgs field does not “cause” mass, any more than gravity “pulls” on objects. Instead, it constrains the configurations that count as meaningful within a given phase.

From this perspective, fields are like semantic systems: not inventories of things, but patterned capacities to make meaning.

Meaning as Resonance Across Cuts

When a field actualises as a particle interaction, or when a measurement registers a value, what’s happening is not a “collapse” in the metaphysical sense. It’s a cut — a perspectival, construal-dependent selection from within a system of phase potential. The constraints of that selection are not imposed from outside; they emerge internally, as resonance conditions between systems.

This is not unlike the way social meanings emerge in dialogue, or the way grammatical choices phase semantic patterns in language. Each actualisation resonates with others across a field of potential — not as isolated facts, but as coherent patterns of construal.

A muon, an electron, or a photon is not “what the world is made of.” It is what the world means under a particular cut.

The Universe as Reflexive Field

Quantum field theory, then, is not just a more sophisticated ontology of matter. It is — when seen through a relational lens — a theory of meaningful potential. The universe becomes a reflexive field, not merely filled with particles, but phasing itself into patterns of resonance, coherence, and event.

This allows us to rethink emergence. It is not a bottom-up construction from parts to wholes, but a perspectival transition from structured potential to construed instance. The vacuum is not “empty.” It is pregnant with patterned possibility — just like the semiotic space of language before a sentence is spoken.

In short, quantum field theory, when reframed, is not a story about invisible stuff moving through spacetime. It is a story about how the conditions of meaningful construal give rise to the very phenomena we call “real.”

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Next, we turn to relativity — and the question of how time and space themselves are phased. Is time a dimension we move through, a parameter we measure, or a construal we enact? What happens when spacetime becomes the field?