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Interrelational Pluralism
The SPLectrum seed’s interrelational pluralism is not only about plurality — that there are many. It is about mechanism: the many interact, and through their interaction produce more. The seed arrives at it from two principles. P0: being and language come into existence together, out of differentiation. P1: language is relational — its reach is the relations it holds. Where languages overlap (P4), the overlap is a site of differentiation: P0 fires again, at the scale of language itself, and what emerges is new language, which enters the web (P5). The creative dynamic is not an extra postulate; it falls out of the relational character of language. That mechanism — creative interaction across boundaries — shows up independently in several frameworks, each arriving from its own starting point at a structurally similar observation.
For the content landscape — who says “many, none privileged” and from which angle — see Pluralism in close affinity.
The structural trajectory
Whitehead — creativity as ultimate category. Many actual occasions, each a unit of experience. Each occasion prehends — takes in, selects, integrates — the occasions around it. What comes out is a new actual occasion that was not there before. Creativity is not a thing in the world; it is the principle that the world advances into novelty. “The many become one, and are increased by one.” The mechanism is explicit: interaction produces what was not there before, and the product enters the field for further interaction.
Peirce — semiosis as generative process. A sign stands for an object to an interpretant. The interpretant is itself a sign, which stands for the same object to a further interpretant. The process is structurally unlimited — each interpretation creates a new sign, which enters the field and generates further interpretation. Meaning is not a state; it is a process that grows. The triadic structure resists reduction to pairs: sign and object alone are inert; the interpretant is what moves things forward. The structural observation is that interaction across three terms produces something that was not present in any one of them.
Bateson — the difference that makes a difference. Information is not stuff; it is a difference in one system that triggers a difference in another. Mind is not located inside a skull — it is the pattern of differences propagating across a circuit. The “pattern which connects” is Bateson’s name for the structural observation that mind, ecology, evolution, and communication share: differences cross boundaries, and what crosses produces further differentiation on the other side. The mechanism is relational — no difference exists in isolation, only in relation to what it differentiates from and what it triggers.
Maturana and Varela — autopoiesis and structural coupling. A living system produces and maintains itself — autopoiesis. It is operationally closed: its processes refer to its own earlier operations. But it is not isolated. It is structurally coupled to its environment — its structure has co-evolved with the structures around it, each triggering changes in the other without either dictating the other’s internal organisation. The structural observation that matters here: autonomous entities interact without merging, and the interaction changes both while each remains itself. Structural coupling rhymes with P4’s equal standing, held through interaction — the interacting parties do not dissolve into each other.
Luhmann — communication as system-forming operation. Social systems are not made of people; they are made of communications. A communication connects to earlier communications and enables later ones — autopoiesis at the social level. New systems emerge through functional differentiation: the economy, law, science, art each outdifferentiate from the social whole and achieve their own operational closure. The mechanism is explicit: communication across a system boundary triggers internal operations in the receiving system, but on the receiving system’s terms — structural coupling, not instruction. Luhmann’s differentiation rhymes with P0 firing again: each new functional system a new boundary, a new closure.
Connolly — pluralisation as process. Most pluralisms describe a state: there are many. Connolly separates pluralism from pluralisation. Pluralism deals with existing diversity — groups, values, identities already legible within the current arrangement. Pluralisation names the emergence of new diversity — interests and identities not yet legible, raising claims that the existing pluralist imaginary cannot yet accommodate. For Connolly, traditional pluralism gives too much priority to past political settlements, and so deflates the politics of pluralisation. His move turns plurality from a noun into a verb.
The affinity
Six frameworks, six vocabularies, one structural observation surfacing in different registers: interaction across boundaries produces what was not there before. Whitehead has the mechanism in full metaphysical dress. Peirce has it in the generative logic of signs. Bateson has it in the propagation of differences. Maturana and Varela have the structural constraint — how autonomy survives interaction. Luhmann has it at the scale of social systems. Connolly names the process that the others describe.
Process metaphysics, semiotics, cybernetics, biology, sociology, political theory: different starting points, different apparatus, shared structural territory.