Cancer as a Failure of Physical Recovery A Constraint-Based, Plain-English Theory of Persistent Matter

This theory proposes that cancer is best understood not as uncontrolled growth or purely genetic malfunction, but as a physical failure of recovery in living tissue. In this framework, healthy tissue behaves like an active material that rapidly erases disturbances and returns to baseline after stress, while cancerous tissue becomes trapped in a state where disturbances persist as physical memory. Despite high internal activity and energy use, cancer fails to recover from mechanical or environmental perturbations, leading to long-lasting structural rigidity, hysteresis, and resistance to change. The theory is grounded in universal physical behavior, is testable using standard tools such as atomic force microscopy and elastography, and makes falsifiable predictions about recovery time, memory, and early detection via critical slowing down—without relying on genetics, signaling pathways, or mathematical formalism.