In systemic functional linguistics, meaning is not made by isolated words or sentences. It emerges from systems of choice. Language offers a set of interdependent options — what you say excludes what you didn’t say, and what you mean arises from this web of structured possibility. Meaning is thus not a substance either. It is a structured field of potential, realised through actual instances of language.
Physics, we suggest, operates in a strikingly similar way. Fields are systems of physical meaning potential — not in the semiotic sense, but in the sense of what physical participation can be actualised. What we observe (particles, interactions, motions) are instances of this potential.
Let’s unpack this analogy carefully.
From Field Strength to Selection Pressure
In physics, a field is typically defined as assigning a value (scalar, vector, tensor) to every point in space(-time). These values are not arbitrary; they are structured to obey the dynamics of the system. A field has a gradient, and particles respond to it.
But what if we think of these gradients as selection pressures?
Just as a linguistic system pressures a speaker to choose one option over another (e.g., active vs. passive voice), a field configures the local "options" for physical interaction. An electron “chooses” its path not freely, but under the pressure of an electric or magnetic field. These pressures constrain what actualisation is possible.
Thus, where traditional physics says:
A field determines the force on a particle,
we can say:
A field constrains the potential for interaction and guides what is likely to be actualised.
This reformulation does not deny causality but reframes it relationally: not as push–pull between things, but as the structured actualisation of potential in context.
Instantial Physics
In SFL, an utterance is not just a message — it is an instantiation of a larger meaning potential. Similarly, a particle-event (like an electron scattering or a photon emission) is not a thing in itself, but an instance of a deeper field potential.
Each particle is a point of actualisation. And each field is a system of potential — not in the quantum sense alone, but more broadly: it is what structures the very possibility of the particle appearing and interacting the way it does.
This gives us a different intuition:
Traditional view: particles are entities that exist in a field.
Relational view: particles are events that instantiate the potential of the field.
In this way, a field becomes the meaning potential of a certain kind of physical reality.
Potential Is Not Possibility Alone
It’s tempting to think of fields as just “possibility spaces.” But a possibility space is often unstructured — anything can happen, and all options are equal.
A potential, in contrast, is structured. It is a differentiated topology of likely and unlikely paths, of coherent and incoherent configurations. In quantum field theory, this topology is governed by symmetry groups and Lagrangians. In SFL, it is governed by systems and paradigms of meaning.
In both cases, actualisation is not arbitrary. It is constrained emergence — a coming-forth shaped by prior structure.
This means that understanding a field is not about detecting a hidden substance but learning its grammar: its regularities, constraints, and articulable tendencies toward one kind of actualisation over another.
Fields, Systems, and the Co-Emergence of Matter
There is no meaning without a system of meanings. There is no instance without a potential. And, we suggest, there is no matter without a field.
Matter, in this view, does not pre-exist the field. It is not a pebble tossed into a pond of influence. It is a standing wave in the sea of potential — a locally stabilised ripple in the relational field. It is through these resonant actualisations that the world becomes recognisable as “real.”
Thus, matter is not the base and fields the adornment. Fields are the ground from which matter appears — just as the linguistic system is the ground from which utterances arise.
Coming Next: The Participatory Ontology of Fields
We’ve now framed fields as relational systems of potential and linked this with the concept of meaning in linguistics. But how do these potentials arise? What sustains them? And what role does the observer — or more generally, the participant — play in their actualisation?
In the next post, we will explore the participatory ontology of fields — how fields are not static backgrounds but dynamic invitations, awaiting the co-presence of another to actualise the next moment of the real.
Because in the end, a field is not a thing. It is an open question the universe is always in the act of answering.
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