This paper extends the Recursive Continuity Framework by developing a substrate-independent ontological account of evolution, complexity, adaptation, collapse, and apparent directionality. Rather than treating evolution as a process aimed at complexity or reducible to descriptive categories such as variation and selection alone, the paper argues that evolutionary dynamics are better understood as the differential persistence of recursively continuous systems under constraint. Within this framework, complexity is defined as the degree to which a system sustains recursive continuity across a network of interdependent constraints that must remain mutually aligned through successive states. Adaptation is reframed as the preservation of recursive continuity under changing conditions, while collapse is defined as the failure of that continuity where coherence can no longer be maintained. On this basis, the paper explains why increasing complexity may appear historically directional without requiring any intrinsic telos of complexity or progress. By grounding evolutionary dynamics in recursive continuity, the analysis situates biological persistence within the broader ontological structure of the Recursive Continuity Framework and clarifies the structural basis on which complexity, adaptation, and collapse can be understood as related expressions of persistence under constraint.
Joseph Nollau (Tue,) studied this question.