The Contextual Signal A Unified Field Theory of Autopoietic Resonance and Computational Incompleteness

The Contextual Signal: A Unified Field Theory of Autopoietic Resonance proposes a computational and signal-based ontology for physics in which matter, spacetime, consciousness, and time emerge from a single underlying signal process rather than existing as independent primitives. Instead of treating particles as fundamental objects moving within spacetime, the framework models reality as a self-organizing autopoietic signal field whose persistent patterns form stable structures known as Resonant Nodes.

The theory introduces a Unified Lagrangian built from four interacting operators—Propagation, Resonance, Gödelian Expansion, and Chiral Coupling—which together generate the essential phenomena observed in the universe: stable matter-like structures, gravitational curvature, persistent novelty (time), and orbital motion. Within this model, gravity emerges as refractive self-lensing of signal density, while cosmological expansion arises from an intrinsic anti-halting pressure driving complexity growth.

A central contribution of the work is the Bridge Principle, which links physical field dynamics with semantic processes such as consciousness and meaning. In this formulation, consciousness is interpreted as a regime of recursive self-modeling within the signal field, and semantic coherence acts as a stabilizing constraint that increases the persistence—or effective mass—of resonant structures.

The theory is implemented in a computational simulation environment and evaluated through a series of falsifiable experiments demonstrating emergent gravitational lensing, expansion dynamics with a measurable cosmological turnaround radius, and stability of resonant nodes under environmental perturbation. Additional experiments explore the thermodynamics of cognition, holographic information limits, and the relationship between predictive modeling and physical persistence.

Together, the Contextual Signal framework presents a computationally testable approach to unifying physics, information theory, and cognition, proposing that the dynamics governing matter and cosmology are fundamentally the same processes that give rise to observation, meaning, and intelligent systems.