Recursive Dynamics: A Cross-Domain Grammar of Feedback, Admissibility, and Realised Structure

This paper introduces Recursive Dynamics (RD), a cross-disciplinary framework for understanding why some systems persist while others fragment, oscillate, or collapse. While many scientific traditions explain how complex structures emerge, far fewer account for how such structures stabilize, endure, and remain coherent under noise, perturbation, and incomplete information. Recursive Dynamics addresses this gap by treating persistence as an architectural property of stabilized recursion rather than as a by-product of feedback alone. At the core of the framework is the Tag-Lock, defined as the minimal unit of recursive binding, and a set of six structural principles governing recursive stability. Persistence is formalized through four abstract elements: a stationary substrate (Λ), accumulated recursive history (χ), an admissibility structure constraining viable configurations (A), and an effective system phase governing responsiveness and timescale (τ). These elements are not domain-specific variables but a shared structural grammar applicable across physical, biological, cognitive, institutional, and artificial systems. The paper introduces Meta-Recursive Disclosure Indexing (Meta-RDI) as a diagnostic framework capable of assessing system health, collapse risk, and transformation under conditions of partial observability. Meta-RDI focuses on recursive reinforcement, regulation, and disclosure rather than on outcome metrics alone, enabling early identification of structural brittleness and failure modes. Building on these components, the paper advances Unified Recursive Attractor Theory (URAT) as a falsifiable hypothesis: that enduring systems persist by converging toward recursive attractors, and that loss of persistence corresponds to identifiable breakdowns in admissibility, continuity, or disclosure. URAT is explicitly framed as a research program rather than a closed theory, intended to guide empirical, computational, and theoretical investigation across domains. Recursive Dynamics does not replace existing theories of complexity, chaos, thermodynamics, information, or emergence. Instead, it provides a unifying structural vocabulary that allows persistence, irreversibility, and transformation to be analyzed comparatively while respecting domain-specific mechanisms and irreducible novelty.