Signal, Nodes, and Nested Order, A Generative Architecture for Cross-Domain Systems Analysis, A Working Hypothesis

This paper proposes a generative ontology grounded in two irreducible primitives: nodes and signal. A node is any system of sufficient organizational complexity to receive, process, and retransmit state changes; signal is the propagation of those state changes between nodes. We argue that this two-element grammar provides a coherent account of structural patterns observed across physical, biological, linguistic, and social systems, each representing a higher order of signal modulation nested upon a first-order physical substrate. Drawing on established work in information theory (Shannon, 1948), thermodynamics of self-organization (Prigogine & Stengers, 1984), the informational interpretation of quantum mechanics (Wheeler, 1990), and complex adaptive systems (Kauffman, 1993), the framework situates Signal Alignment Theory (SAT; Tanner, 2025a) within a coherent foundational architecture. We further contend that several major theoretical traditions, in physics, biology, linguistics, and cybernetics, have each been describing distinct organizational levels of the same underlying node-signal structure, and that recognizing this shared grammar enables principled cross-domain comparison and predictive analysis.