34 Scaling Construal: Reflexive Growth in the Collective Horizon

Series: Construal and the Collective – Part 34

---

Introduction: Returning to the Question of Scale

We began this series with a question fundamental to relational ontology and semiotics:

How does construal scale?

This question asked how meaning emerges, grows, and aligns from individual construals through social collectives and beyond.

Now, after tracing phasing, alignment, and reflexivity,

we offer a new understanding:

Construal scales reflexively through the very processes that produce collective coherence and transformation.

---

1. From Individuals to Collective Horizons

Scaling is not mere aggregation.

It is a reflexive reorganisation of construals.

Individuals do not simply add up;

they phase-align, co-construct, and transform meaning together.

Each collective horizon is:

• An intersubjective field of semiotic potential

• A reflexive architecture that organises individual construals

• A phasing medium that supports symbolic turns

---

2. Reflexive Scaling as Semiotic Phasing

Scaling is best understood as a process of phasing:

a series of reflexive alignments and re-alignments

through which construals recursively fold into larger, more complex forms.

At each level, the collective:

• Refines construal boundaries

• Coordinates differences in perspectives

• Performs transformations to sustain coherence

This recursive phasing is the signature of scaling in relational ontology.

---

3. Symbolic Turn as the Locus of Scaling

The symbolic turn—where a collective construes its own construals—

is the critical locus where scaling leaps occur.

Such turns create:

• New semiotic registers

• Expanded fields of possible meaning

• Novel modalities of reflexivity

Scaling thus unfolds as an evolutionary spiral of symbolic turns.

---

4. The Collective Horizon as an Open System

Collectives are open, porous systems:

continuously engaging with environment, other collectives, and internal dynamics.

This openness allows:

• Diffraction—patterns of meaning refracted and transformed

• Resonance—shared symbolic vibrations that sustain alignment

• Phase transitions—moments of rapid systemic change

Scaling is not static growth but dynamic flow.

---

5. Implications for Ontology and Meaning

Understanding construal scaling as reflexive phasing:

• Challenges linear or hierarchical models of social complexity

• Grounds collective identity in processes, not fixed states

• Reframes meaning as an emergent, recursive, and relational phenomenon

It invites new ways of theorising social formation, communication, and cognition.

---

Conclusion: Toward a Relational Horizon

This series closes on the horizon of possibility:

A relational ontology that embraces reflexivity, phasing, and symbolic turn

as fundamental mechanisms of meaning and reality.

Our next blog series will explore how these insights apply

to specific domains of social life, language, and culture.

For now, we leave readers with the invitation to reimagine construal not as isolated acts,

but as rhythms within collective horizons—ever scaling, ever transforming.