Life is an information-object mode of organization that maintains itself, predicts and acts within its symvironment, and participates in covolutionary lineages that accumulate switching capacity across generations.
Life is the mode of organization in which information objects engage in covolution.
In this framework, an information object is an encapsulated entity whose identity is constituted by its informational structure, operational boundaries, and functional role within a larger system.
To engage in covolution means that the object is not merely passively shaped by its environment, but actively participates in a reciprocal process with its symvironment: it maintains its own organization, senses and predicts external and internal states, switches between possible actions, and contributes to a lineage in which informational control becomes progressively accumulated, refined, or reorganized across generations.
A system is alive when it:
- maintains its own organized identity against decay,
- processes information to regulate itself,
- interacts adaptively with its symvironment,
- participates in reproduction, inheritance, or lineage-level continuity,
- accumulates or transmits switching capacity across time.
This is not intended as a final universal definition of life. It is a working characterization within covolution theory. It should be understood as a position that follows from the framework’s core commitments: that living systems are informationally organized, energetically sustained, self-maintaining, predictive, lineage-forming objects embedded in reciprocal symvironmental dynamics.
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