Introduction: The Spiral, Not the Circle
Symbolic sedimentation stabilises meaning — but it risks foreclosure. To endure, a symbolic system must do more than preserve what has been. It must evolve reflexively, sustaining the tension between form and rephasing.
This is not a return to origin, nor an endless loop of novelty. It is a spiral dynamic: symbolic systems that move forward by folding meaning back through themselves, re-aligning their architectures to accommodate new construals while retaining the capacity to mean.
1. The Paradox of Stability and Change
A symbolic system lives by two principles:
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Stability: It must preserve coherence across construals, enabling coordination and continuity.
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Plasticity: It must remain open to phase-shift, allowing the collective to re-align meaning as conditions evolve.
This is a paradox. But not a contradiction. In relational ontology, paradox is the condition of reflexivity: the system must hold itself open to its own reorganisation.
Reflexive evolution is the capacity of a symbolic system to rephase its own sedimented architectures while sustaining semiotic coherence.
This is not adaptation in the Darwinian sense. It is symbolic renewal, driven not by fitness but by construal.
2. The Spiral as Symbolic Form
The spiral gives us a diagrammatic feel for this reflexive movement:
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Each loop marks a rephasing — not a break, but a transposition
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The axis is the sedimented symbolic architecture
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The trajectory is meaning reconfigured through symbolic iteration
Importantly, the spiral is not just metaphoric. It names a structural principle: the ability of a system to return to form, but not to the same point — to re-enter its own symbolic space at a higher-order of complexity or alignment.
A symbolic system sustains itself not by resisting change, but by re-entering its own constraints through new construals.
3. Reflexive Systems and the Re-Entrant Cut
As we saw in previous series, reflexivity requires a cut — a shift in perspective that allows the system to see itself as a system. In symbolic evolution, this re-entrant cut occurs when:
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A sedimented form becomes the object of construal
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The system symbolises its own symbolic operations
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Meaning rephases around this act of internal reflexion
This is more than meta-discourse. It is a semiotic inflection that alters the system's trajectory — a recursive move that re-conditions what it means to mean within that system.
Reflexive evolution occurs when a symbolic system symbolises its own construals — and reorganises accordingly.
4. Constraints That Enable Change
To spiral rather than calcify, symbolic systems must build enabling constraints into their architectures:
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Meta-genres that frame discourse without fixing it
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Dialogic tensions that preserve multiplicity
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Rituals of revision that legitimise symbolic transformation
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Institutions of memory that hold form open to re-alignment
These are not merely social practices. They are symbolic technologies — patterns that maintain the system’s coherence while keeping its construals reflexively revisable.
An enabling constraint is one that holds the form open for rephasing.
Without such constraints, systems either ossify (into dogma) or dissolve (into noise).
5. Meaning as Evolving Potential
In this model, meaning is never fixed. It is not a content to be preserved, nor a function to be optimised. It is:
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A potential that emerges through construal
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A trajectory shaped by recursive form
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A reflexive movement that phases symbolic sedimentation toward new alignments
To speak of reflexive evolution is to treat meaning as that which enables its own transformation, in continuity with the past but not constrained by it.
Meaning evolves when a collective construes its symbolic constraints as open to rephasing — and acts accordingly.
Conclusion: Toward a Semiotic Ecology
Reflexive evolution is not just a feature of language or culture. It is an ecological principle of symbolic life: the capacity of meaning systems to hold themselves open to their own ongoing construal.
In the next post, we will widen this view, asking how semiotic ecologies — nested, co-evolving systems of construal — enable or inhibit this spiral dynamic at different scales of social life.
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