Slide 21: A Biological Cline Of Instantiation

… where organism (as instance) ‘instantiates’ species (as potential).

By the way, if it is difficult to think of species as potential, think of a species genome — as biological potential — being instantiated by the (actual) genome of a specific organism.

You’ll notice that midway along the cline, ‘subspecies’ is an instance type if viewed from the ‘instance’ pole, but a subpotential if viewed from the ‘potential’ end of the cline.

We can clarify the connection with the linguistic cline of instantiation by paraphrasing Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 524-5), substituting ‘species’ for ‘system’ and organism for ‘text’:

Species is instantiated as organism, the two representing the poles at either end of the cline of instantiation.  Species and organism are not different phenomena; they are phases of one and the same phenomenon.  When seen up close, this phenomenon appears to us as organism; but when we adopt a more distant observer perspective, we can build up a picture of it as species.  Species and organism form a cline rather than a dichotomy, because between these two poles there is a biological region of intermediate patterns (conceived of as instance types — as organism types, or as subsystems — as subspecies).

So let’s return now to the instantiation of social potential.  We can represent a cline of social instantiation along these lines …