It depends on whether we think of generality as something descriptive (a pattern abstracted from specifics) or prescriptive (a constraint that shapes how specifics emerge).

If generality is merely descriptive, then it is a retrospective abstraction—a mental shorthand that captures what various specifics have in common. This makes generality a kind of epistemic convenience rather than something with ontological depth.

If generality is prescriptive, then it has a shaping power—it structures the space of possibilities, acting as a set of constraints or tendencies that channel how specifics manifest. But this risks making potential too determinate, reducing it to a preconfigured set of forms.

Potential, by contrast, is always open-ended—it is what could be, not what must be. If generality is too rigid, it starts to retrofit specifics with necessity, treating what happened as what had to happen. But if generality is understood more fluidly, as an evolving pattern of constraints and affordances, then it can be a way of understanding potential without reducing it to a mere collection of pre-existing options.

So, perhaps the best way to phrase their relationship is:

• Potential is the dynamic space of what could emerge.

• Generality is a shifting set of tendencies that condition, but do not determine, that emergence.

Does that sound like the right distinction, or does it still impose too much structure on potential?