Covolution glossary — canonical definitions for the covolution framework. This page is the single source of truth for covolution terminology; other pages should conform to the definitions here. Status tags: (locked) = agreed and stable; (provisional) = in use but not yet finalized.
Core
- Covolution (locked)
- Viability-expanding change produced by functional-information processing between a system and its symvironment — the exploration and stabilization of cybernetic attractors in informational phase space, in which feedback biases living systems toward structured, recursive, and anticipatory architectures. Variation and selection are retained but relocated: selection acts downstream as a validator of internally generated direction rather than as its sole proximate source. Antonym: dysvolution.
- Dysvolution (locked)
- The general viability-eroding counterpart of covolution, at any scale: change in which system–symvironment coupling and functional-information processing degrade, so the system's accessible trajectories become less stable, less adaptive, or less open-ended. Not "evolution backward" — it is impaired covolutionary coupling. Genus → species: dysvolution is the genus; gerorhesis is dysvolution in the aging domain.
- Symvironment (locked)
- The organism–environment complex treated as a single, mutually constitutive informational system. The environment is not a detached external selector but a co-constructed field that the horon both shapes and is shaped by.
- Entelenomy (locked)
- The capacity of a system to generate its own directional dynamics from its own informational state — prospective, internally sourced direction. Contrasted with teleonomy (purpose grounded retrospectively in past selection): entelenomy is prospective, teleonomy retrospective.
Units and primitives
- Switch (provisional)
- The structural primitive of the framework: an operationally complete unit that (i) has a multi-stable attractor structure, (ii) responds to a specifiable input class, (iii) holds its state long enough to drive a downstream consumer, and (iv) couples to at least one other switch. Four functions: respond, distinguish, hold, couple.
- Horon (locked)
- An encapsulated (boundaried) switching architecture that maintains predictive coupling with its symvironment — the individuated unit of covolution, the entity that covolves. Four conditions, in order: (1) distinguishability, (2) internal state-space, (3) computation, (4) predictive coupling to future-relevant symvironment states. Horonhood is substrate-neutral (biological, cognitive, social, technological, cultural-symbolic, hybrid); horon dynamics are substrate-specific. Distinct from Koestler's holon in that predictive coupling is a defining condition.
- Biological information object (BiO) (locked)
- A biological horon. "BiO" and "biological horon" denote the same thing; prefer one term per page and gloss the other on first use.
- Cybernetic attractor (locked)
- A dynamically stable informational configuration toward which a system's trajectories converge and to which they return under perturbation (basin stability). Distinct from homeostasis, which is local set-point regulation.
Aging
The aging terms decompose one phenomenon. The degradative flow is a vector: gerorhesis is the flow, geroflux its magnitude, gerotropy its direction; gerostasis is the regime in which the flow is arrested; gerotype is the resulting type (classification). Gerorhesis is the aging-specific case of the general process dysvolution.
- Gerostasis (locked)
- The maintained regime of aging-resistant regulatory order: a horon's preserved identity, feedback fidelity, perturbation-recovery capacity, and required (requisite) functional variety in its cybernetic attractors and switching architecture; the regulatory condition interventions aim to preserve or restore (the therapeutic target). A regime/state, not a degradation process. (Greek -stasis = "steady-state", parallel to homeostasis.) Antonym: gerorhesis.
- Gerorhesis (locked)
- Aging-directed pathological state-flow away from gerostasis through non-required, identity-eroding regulatory transitions — the aging-specific form of dysvolution. The process (the whole degenerative flow). Greek -rhesis ("flux/flow") ↔ -stasis ("standstill"); cf. homeostasis ↔ homeorhesis.
- Gerotropy (locked)
- The direction of the aging flow: the emergent, non-random bias of biological state space toward aged, non-required, identity-eroding configurations as gerostatic control weakens (the aging axis / tropism of decline). A probabilistic bias, not a programmed-death direction. Greek -tropy ("turning/direction"). Caveat: visually close to -trophy (atrophy) — gloss on first use.
- Geroflux (locked)
- The magnitude of the aging flow — the observable maladaptive switching flux produced by gerorhesis: increased rate, density, or probability of unstable, off-attractor, non-required state transitions during aging. The operational/measurable term (single-cell dispersion, methylation/aging-axis variance, slowed perturbation recovery, attractor broadening, off-lineage/hybrid-identity and inflammatory-switching scores).
- Gerotype (locked)
- The type (classification) of a horon's aging — its aged phenotype characterized by which parts of its switching architecture and cybernetic attractors are failing and how far. To aging what genotype is to inheritance (a classification, not a single state); the structured readout of accumulated geroflux. Two levels: four top-level gerotypes — substrate (G-I), regulatory (G-II), coupling (G-III), lineage (G-IV) — each decomposed into a fidelity / capacity / recovery triad. See Gerotype.
Relation to capacity C
With a scalar viability-weighted aggregate ‖C‖ of the functional-information-processing capacity C = (A, M, P, K): covolution = ‖C‖ rises or becomes better-organized; gerostasis = ‖C‖ maintained against perturbation; dysvolution = ‖C‖ degrades; gerorhesis = age-driven degradation of ‖C‖; gerotropy = the direction of that degradation; geroflux = its measurable switching instability; gerotype = the classification of the resulting state.
Slogan: Covolution builds viable trajectories; dysvolution erodes them. Gerostasis resists aging; gerorhesis drives it. Gerotropy gives aging its direction; geroflux gives it measurable motion.
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