Elements of Coherence

July 27, 2026 Coherence No Comments

While exploring neuroscience, Gestalt psychology, artificial intelligence, and other meaningful complex systems, organizational principles keep resurfacing as different expressions of Coherence Theory.

This blog looks specifically at these recurring principles — presented in the addendum as ‘elements of coherence.’ Together, they reveal the contours of a theory that is more than the sum of its parts.

A discovery

Sometimes a theory grows almost unnoticed. Small observations accumulate. A concept encountered in neuroscience suddenly resembles one from physiology. A principle in Gestalt psychology echoes something found in artificial intelligence. Ideas that first appeared unrelated gradually begin to fit together.

While writing my PhD about coherence, I repeatedly find familiar patterns under different names. Physiologists speak about dynamic boundaries. Systems biologists emphasize circular causality. Gestalt psychologists describe organization. Researchers in cognition focus on context and meaning. A.I. researchers rediscover similar ideas as they search for more adaptive forms of intelligence.

The question is no longer whether a particular article supports Coherence Theory. Instead: which aspect of Coherence Theory does this illuminate? Every new paper seems to shed light on one corner of a much larger landscape.

The table in the addendum is an attempt to map that landscape. It does not claim to be complete. Nor does it present fixed laws. Rather, it gathers recurring elements that repeatedly appear wherever coherent organization becomes visible.

From isolated insights to one theory

Science often advances in this way. Long before chemistry became a coherent discipline, people knew about oxygen, carbon, sulfur, and iron. The individual elements were familiar. Only later did their deeper relationships become visible.

Something similar has happened repeatedly throughout the history of science. Biological observations preceded evolutionary theory. Electrical phenomena were known long before field theory united them. Pieces usually come before the picture.

Perhaps coherence is now reaching a similar stage. Numerous disciplines have independently discovered principles that explain important aspects of living systems, minds, societies, and intelligent behavior. Each principle works well within its own field. Yet increasingly they appear less like separate discoveries and more like members of the same family.

This blog therefore speaks about ‘elements.’ The word is chosen deliberately. These are not inventions added to reality. They are recurring discoveries about how organized reality seems to work.

Living systems are never isolated

One recurring theme is remarkably simple. Living systems never exist in complete isolation.

Every organism continually exchanges matter, energy, information, and meaning with its surroundings. Even the cell membrane, often presented as a boundary, is actually a place of continuous interaction. The immune system continually negotiates between self and non-self. The brain develops through ongoing exchanges with body and environment. Human beings are shaped through relationships from the very beginning.

This makes boundaries surprisingly different from walls. A boundary is less a line that separates than a region where interaction becomes organized. It protects while simultaneously connecting. It changes together with the organization it serves.

Earlier blogs have explored this from different perspectives. Mind vs. Body OR Living vs. Non-Living shows that life and mind cannot be separated into isolated compartments. Coherence in the Brain — a Primer on Waves illustrates how large-scale coordination emerges from continually interacting neural activity rather than from disconnected modules.

Seen in this light, openness is not the opposite of identity. On the contrary, identity depends upon meaningful openness. Coherence continually renews itself through interaction with the world.

Organization exists across levels

Once living systems are understood as open, another recurring principle almost follows naturally.

No single level of organization can claim absolute explanatory privilege. Genes matter. Cells matter. Organs matter. Organisms matter. Societies matter. Each contributes something that cannot simply be reduced to another level.

This does not mean that everything causes everything else equally. Rather, different levels influence one another in different ways. Local interactions give rise to larger organizations, while those larger organizations simultaneously shape the possibilities available to their components. Explanation therefore becomes circular rather than strictly one-directional.

A beautiful illustration comes from modern cardiac physiology. Researchers discovered that many equations describing ion channels were entirely correct yet insufficient to explain heart behavior. The solution was not to replace the equations but to expand the model’s organizational boundary. Suddenly, the same local mechanisms became understandable within a richer physiological context. The explanatory power changed because the organization changed.

This echoes ideas explored in Formalizing Coherence, where coherence is presented as preceding formal description, and in Lisa’s Common Sense, where meaningful organization naturally precedes formal reasoning. Components remain indispensable. Yet they become fully understandable only within the coherent whole of which they form a part.

Stability is movement

At first sight, stability seems to suggest something fixed. Yet living systems reveal another possibility.

A healthy organism remains recognizably itself while almost everything inside it changes. Cells are replaced. Proteins are renewed. Memories develop. Relationships evolve. Even the brain continually reorganizes itself. Stability, remarkably, is achieved not by resisting change but by organizing it.

Complex systems researchers often describe this in terms of attractors: stable patterns that remain dynamic. One may think of a whirlpool in a river. The water constantly changes, yet the whirlpool retains its recognizable form. Its identity consists not in fixed material but in organized movement.

This perspective also helps us understand plasticity. Adaptation is not the abandonment of identity but one of its deepest expressions. Robust systems absorb disturbances precisely because they remain capable of reorganizing themselves.

Several earlier blogs approach this from complementary angles. Coherence in the Brain — a Primer on Waves explores how dynamic neural activity gives rise to stable function, while The Survival of the Fitting suggests that what endures is not rigid optimization but the continual capacity to remain fitting within changing circumstances.

In coherence, stability and flexibility therefore cease to be opposites. They become partners in one ongoing process of becoming.

Every coherent system has a history

Nothing coherent appears out of nowhere. Every organized system carries traces of the path by which it came into being. A mature tree tells a different story from a sapling, even if both belong to the same species. Likewise, two experienced physicians may arrive at the same diagnosis through somewhat different experiences, habits, and intuitions. Their present coherence reflects their history.

This reminds us that development is not simply the accumulation of parts. It is the gradual refinement of relationships. As coherence deepens, earlier stages are not discarded but integrated into richer organizations. Learning illustrates this beautifully. We do not merely add new knowledge. We continually reorganize what we already know.

An equally intriguing observation is that similar functions can arise through different mechanisms. Biology offers countless examples, and artificial intelligence increasingly does as well. This is sometimes called multiple realization or degeneracy. The exact mechanism matters less than the coherent organization it supports. That insight resonates strongly with SRNNs — One Step Closer to the Brain?, where the question shifts from copying biology toward understanding the organizational principles that biology exemplifies.

Historical development therefore becomes far more than an interesting background story. It is part of the explanation itself. Coherence is not assembled like a machine. It grows.

Meaning lives between things

If organization develops through relationships, then meaning does as well.

A word has no meaning in complete isolation. A gesture only becomes meaningful within a situation. A scientific observation derives significance from the conceptual framework surrounding it. Even a neuron has no meaningful role apart from the network in which it participates.

This insight has appeared repeatedly throughout these blogs. From Patterns to Meaning explored how meaning cannot simply be extracted from patterns but emerges from their coherent relationships. Likewise, information alone is never enough. Information becomes meaningful only within an organized context.

Gestalt psychology expressed something similar many decades ago: the whole is different from the sum of its parts. Coherence Theory adds a slightly different emphasis. It suggests that meaning is not merely contained within the whole. Rather, meaning continually arises through the ongoing coherencing among the parts of that whole.

Seen this way, context is not an external addition to meaning. Context is one way coherence expresses itself.

Intelligence is coherencing

Once meaning is understood as relational, intelligence begins to look different as well.

It becomes difficult to define intelligence solely as computation. Calculation certainly plays an important role, but intelligent behavior also requires appreciating relationships that cannot easily be reduced to explicit rules. This is what people often call common sense. It is the quiet ability to recognize what fits before one can fully explain why.

That theme was central in Lisa’s Common Sense. Formal logic remains invaluable, yet it grows out of a deeper capacity to sense coherent organization. Creativity follows a similar path. Truly creative ideas rarely emerge from randomness. They arise when existing patterns become reorganized into new coherent wholes.

This changes how to view intelligence itself. Intelligence is not simply the storage of information or the execution of algorithms. It is the continual generation of increasingly coherent responses within an ever-changing world. In that sense, intelligence is not a possession. It is an activity. One might even say that intelligence is coherencing in action.

Does coherence have a direction?

Not in the sense of a rigid blueprint toward which everything must evolve. Living systems surprise us too often for that. Nor is coherence simply random. Across biology, development, learning, and human relationships, there appears to be a tendency toward greater fitting — toward organizations that integrate more successfully with themselves and with their surroundings.

This directionality is gentle rather than forceful. It leaves room for exploration, mistakes, and novelty. Yet it also explains why coherent systems often become more adaptive, more meaningful, and more capable of responding appropriately to new situations.

The Survival of the Fitting explores this idea from an evolutionary perspective. The same principle extends naturally into human life. Deep understanding tends to foster deeper connectedness. Mature intelligence tends to widen rather than narrow perspective.

Within AURELIS, this naturally touches upon Compassion. Compassion is not an external moral rule imposed upon intelligence. It is one of the richest expressions of coherence between persons. As coherence deepens, respect for others becomes increasingly natural.

The elements belong together

Individually, each element in the addendum table tells an interesting story. Together, they reveal something more.

Open systems naturally require dynamic boundaries. Dynamic boundaries make circular interactions possible. Circular causality gives rise to organization that both shapes and is shaped by its components. Such organization develops attractors that stabilize ongoing change while preserving plasticity. Through development, coherent contexts emerge, allowing meaning to arise from relationships. Meaning supports common sense, creativity, and intelligence. Deep intelligence, in turn, naturally opens toward compassion.

None of these transitions is rigid. They overlap, reinforce one another, and sometimes unfold simultaneously. Yet taken together they begin to resemble less a collection of separate ideas than a living network of mutually supporting principles.

Perhaps that is exactly what one should expect. If coherence is real, then the elements of coherence should themselves form a coherent whole.

Seeing the same pattern everywhere

Every scientific discipline develops its own language. That diversity is valuable because each perspective illuminates reality in its own way. Yet sometimes different languages describe remarkably similar patterns.

That is increasingly happening here. Physiologists speak about boundaries. Dynamical systems theorists describe attractors. Gestalt psychologists emphasize organized wholes. Cognitive scientists investigate meaning. A.I. researchers search for architectures that learn, adapt, and integrate. The vocabulary differs. The underlying organization often feels surprisingly familiar.

Coherence may be the pattern that many sciences have been discovering all along — each from its own perspective, each illuminating another element of the same deeper reality. This does not prove Coherence Theory, nor should it. A theory grows by continually engaging with experience, welcoming correction, and remaining open to development.

The elements presented here are landmarks along an ongoing journey.

―

Addendum

Table: Elements of coherence

Element of coherence	Essence	Contrasts with	Appears in	Enables	Related elements	Coherence perspective
Open systems	Living and intelligent systems continuously interact with their environment.	Closed, isolated systems	Biology, ecology, cognition, A.I., society	Adaptation, learning, evolution	Dynamic boundaries, meaning, plasticity	Coherence is continually renewed through interaction with the world.
Dynamic boundaries	Boundaries are functional, evolving, and context-dependent rather than fixed.	Rigid compartments	Cell physiology, brain networks, immune system, organizations	Flexibility, integration, resilience	Open systems, organization, attractors	Coherence continually reshapes its own boundaries.
No privileged level	No single organizational level is fundamentally causal.	Reductionism, hierarchy	Systems biology, neuroscience, A.I.	Multi-level understanding	Circular causality, organization	Coherence exists across levels rather than residing in one of them.
Circular causality	Higher and lower levels continually influence one another.	Linear cause-and-effect	Physiology, development, cognition, society	Self-organization, regulation	No privileged level, attractors	Coherence is maintained through reciprocal influence.
Organization constrains components	The whole shapes the behavior of its parts without violating local laws.	Pure bottom-up determinism	Gestalt psychology, physiology, embryology, A.I.	Robustness, functional specialization	Circular causality, attractors	Components become meaningful within the coherent whole.
Attractors	Stable patterns emerge while remaining dynamic.	Static equilibrium or complete randomness	Brain dynamics, motor control, ecosystems	Stability through flexibility	Organization, dynamic boundaries	Coherence stabilizes ongoing change rather than eliminating it.
Plasticity	Organization can change while preserving identity.	Rigidity	Brain, immune system, learning, evolution	Adaptation, creativity	Attractors, development	Coherence grows by reorganizing itself.
Multiple realization (degeneracy)	Different structures can achieve similar functions.	One-to-one mapping	Genetics, neuroscience, AI	Robustness, resilience	Plasticity, organization	Coherence matters more than the exact mechanism.
Historical development	Present organization reflects developmental pathways.	Timeless description	Development, evolution, learning	Individuality, adaptation	Plasticity, meaning	Coherence is a process rather than a state.
Context dependence	Meaning and function depend on surrounding organization.	Context-free mechanisms	Language, perception, physiology, A.I.	Appropriate behavior	Dynamic boundaries, meaning	Coherence determines what something means in a given situation.
Meaning is relational	Meaning arises from relationships within a coherent whole.	Isolated symbols or data	Gestalt, language, cognition, AURELIS	Understanding, communication	Context, organization	Meaning is an expression of coherence.
Common sense	Immediate appreciation of coherent relationships before formal reasoning.	Rule-following alone	Everyday cognition, expertise, Lisa	Practical intelligence	Meaning, organization	Common sense is coherence recognized intuitively.
Emergence through coherencing	Novel organization develops through ongoing interaction.	Sudden mysterious emergence	Development, evolution, creativity	Innovation	Circular causality, attractors	Coherence is not merely maintained—it continually creates new organization.
Directionality	Organization tends toward greater fitting without requiring a fixed endpoint.	Pure randomness or rigid teleology	Evolution, development, ethics, learning	Growth, purposefulness	Plasticity, meaning	Coherence provides direction without imposing determinism.
Robustness	Systems preserve identity despite continual perturbation.	Fragility	Brain, physiology, ecosystems	Reliability, persistence	Attractors, plasticity	Coherence absorbs disturbance while remaining itself.
Creativity	New possibilities arise through reorganization of existing coherence.	Random novelty or mechanical recombination	Science, art, A.I., evolution	Innovation	Plasticity, meaning	Creativity is coherence discovering new forms of itself.
Intelligence	The capacity to generate increasingly coherent responses across situations.	Computation alone	Humans, animals, A.I.	Insight, learning, adaptation	Meaning, common sense	Intelligence is coherencing in action.
Compassion	Deep interpersonal coherence that respects and enhances the other.	Self-centered optimization	Human relationships, AURELIS, Lisa	Trust, healing, ethical A.I.	Meaning, intelligence	The highest expression of coherence is shared coherence.
Individuality	Maintaining and developing identity through time despite continual exchange with environment.	Fixed objects or arbitrary boundaries	Biology, immunology, cognition, AI	Self-maintenance, agency, adaptation	Dynamic boundaries, historical development, robustness	Individuality is an ongoing process of coherencing rather than a predefined entity.
Autonomy	Increasingly regulating itself while remaining open to meaningful interaction.	Complete dependence or complete isolation	Neuroscience, physiology, A.I., development	Self-regulation, resilience, learning	Open systems, individuality, robustness	Genuine autonomy grows from coherence rather than separation.
Nested individuality	Existing within larger coherent organizations across multiple scales.	Single privileged individual	Cells, organisms, societies, ecosystems, A.I.	Multi-scale coordination	No privileged level, individuality, circular causality	Coherence naturally forms nested wholes.
Predictive organization	Increasingly anticipating own future by preserving meaningful organization.	Reactive behavior alone	Brain function, development, A.I. evolution	Adaptive behavior, planning	Historical development, autonomy, intelligence	Prediction is one expression of coherence maintained through time.
Self-maintenance	Actively preserving and renewing oneself instead of merely resisting change.	Passive persistence	Physiology, immunology, ecosystems, A.I.	Robustness, identity	Plasticity, autonomy, attractors	Coherence continually recreates itself.
Resonance	Mutually influencing one another through organized interaction without losing own identity.	Mechanical transmission or isolation	Human communication, brain networks, music, AURELIS	Communication, cooperation, Compassion	Meaning, open systems, intelligence	Coherence grows through reciprocal resonance.
Constraint through coherence	Constraints do not merely limit behavior but channel it toward richer organization.	Freedom as absence of constraints	Embryology, motor control, AI, education	Skill, development, creativity	Organization, attractors, directionality	The most fruitful constraints arise from coherence itself.
Economy of organization	Greater coherence often achieves richer function with less unnecessary complexity.	Accumulation of mechanisms	Evolution, physiology, A.I. engineering	Elegance, scalability, robustness	Organization, intelligence, creativity	Coherence simplifies without reducing richness.

Note:

The leftmost column reads like the ontology of Coherence Theory: what exists.
The rightmost column reads like the philosophy of Coherence Theory: how to understand what exists.
Everything in between forms the bridge from one to the other.