Life as Adaptive Coherence

Abstract

This position paper examines the organizational origin of life within the Scalar Drag Emergence Framework (SDEF). Rather than defining life by its chemical composition, metabolism, reproduction, or specific biological substrate, it investigates whether life may instead be understood as an emergent regime of adaptive coherence arising from organized transport under constraint. Building upon the SDEF theory of compartmentation, the paper proposes that living systems are distinguished by their capacity for continual interdependent reconstruction while maintaining admissibility across multiple simultaneous constraints. Under this interpretation, adaptive coherence is viewed as the observable manifestation of a deeper organizational process through which persistent transport architectures preserve identity under continual perturbation. The paper presents an ontological perspective intended to complement, rather than replace, existing biological definitions of life.