Recursive Field-Structure Theory: A Scale-Relative Framework for Emergence, Agency, and Action

Recursive Field-Structure Theory is a scale-relative conceptual framework connecting the emergence of effective objects with a bounded account of agency and action. It defines field-like organization through a domain, distributed content, and coupling structure; distinguishes field states from laws of transformation; and specifies when stabilized nodes and relations support an effective higher-scale field. Its practical extension represents laws, task-relevant environmental states, and the agent’s internal organization as distinct analytical roles within one coupled process. Goals, capabilities, and cognitive models are treated as macroscopic structures of the agent field, while action is modeled through law-constrained intervention, policy evaluation, partial observation, and receding-horizon revision. The framework is integrative and programmatic rather than a completed empirical theory.