ontological impossibility

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

Ontological impossibility is RB3’s real structural nonavailability of a transition within a determinate field, rather than merely not knowing how to achieve it or judging it morally impermissible. It can help shape the directions available to becoming. The proposal preserves this field-relative sense while distinguishing logical, physical, historical and normative modalities and avoiding the inference that every presently blocked option is impossible forever.

Explanation

The Simondonian discussion locates incompatibility inside a metastable situation rather than in a substantial negative entity. Certain dimensions cannot interact or coexist without transformation, and their limits participate in the emergence of form. The entry therefore treats nonavailability as materially organized, not as a ghostly power standing outside the process.

RB3’s taxonomy explicitly separates varieties of cannot. Conditional impossibility can remain objective relative to architecture, history or laws even when changed assumptions alter the field. Historical lock-in is consequently different from logical contradiction and from a moral veto; the proposal keeps these distinctions instead of making all difficulty metaphysically absolute.

The native quantum qualification also distinguishes standard law-permitted possibility from Kastner’s narrower prepared-or-emitted physically real possibility and the broader ontology of Volume I. The entry preserves these book-specific uses rather than treating the taxonomy as a direct gloss on res potentia or claiming every conceivable lawful event is already physically instantiated.

Scope and attribution

Retain modality distinctions and the explicit Kastner/Volume I scope qualification.

RB3 — The Real Book, Volume III: Murmurations

Real nonavailability is scoped to a field and differs among modalities and senses of possibility.

Occurrence locators: 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 45, 46; Notes: 40.