If all knowledge of the physical world passes through an electromagnetic channel, then the formalism native to that channel --- complex-valued adaptive signal processing --- is the natural language for characterizing the systems we call living. This paper shows that accepting this epistemological constraint leads, through a sequence of forced steps, to a specific and unique mathematical architecture: coupled networks of recursive widely linear complex adaptive filters operating in predictive configuration on a shared background field, without an external teacher. Each simplification of the architecture (real-valued, strictly linear, non-recursive) eliminates a specific capability associated with life. A coherent cluster within such a network --- a subset satisfying differential coherence, self-produced noncircularity, Fisher identifiability, energy balance, and recursive stability --- provides a computable, substrate-independent characterization of a living system, with explicit bridges to autopoiesis, the Free Energy Principle, and artificial life simulations. When evolution is reformulated in the frequency--phase domain, without time or space as independent variables, the resulting constructions turn out to be independently known: the genotype space is the Poincar\'e polydisk, evolutionary equilibrium is the water-filling solution from information theory, cluster formation is Kuramoto synchronization with adaptive frequencies, growth is heterodyne frequency conversion, and spectral competition is the cognitive radio problem. The convergence of five independent formalisms on a single mathematical object is the strongest evidence that the frequency--phase domain is not an arbitrary language but the natural one for describing life and evolution. Three formal results are established: global optimization of a coupled filter network eliminates all Markov blankets (explaining the Particle Lenia observation), regeneration is possible if and only if the surviving subset satisfies a persistent excitation condition, and structural incompatibility of recursive architectures produces irreversible speciation.
Mikhail Liashkov (Fri,) studied this question.