Ecological Homeostasis as a Model of Stability in Complex Systems - Constraint Networks, Cross-Domain Analogies, and the Question of Convergence

AbstractThis paper proposes ecological homeostasis as a modelling framework forunderstanding stability in complex systems across multiple domains. The claim isstructural rather than metaphysical: systems that persist—whether ecological,physiological, neural, infrastructural, or computational—exhibit convergent patternsof constraint-mediated stability that are formally describable through sharedmathematical structures. The paper proposes that these structural patternsconstitute a distinct object of study—Constraint-Mediated Stability—which can beinvestigated through a shared formal vocabulary drawn from dynamical systems andnetwork theory, independent of substrate. Cross-domain analogies are presented asheuristic tools grounded in an established philosophy of structural analogy (Hesse,1966; Bartha, 2010), not as identity claims. Seven domains are examined: ecology,infrastructure, physiology, neural systems, quantum systems, artificial intelligence,extractive industry, and education. Each domain is independently grounded in itsown literature before structural parallels are drawn. A formal cross-domain mappingis provided, and one analogy—between ecological regime shift and power gridcascading failure—is developed in mathematical detail to demonstrate formaltraction beyond qualitative parallel. This paper does not assert that ecologicalhomeostasis constitutes a universal ontology. It documents a recurrence ofhomeostatic constraint patterns across scales and domains, provides null hypothesesand falsification criteria, and explicitly defers the question of whether this recurrencereflects a fundamental organising principle or a modelling artefact to futureempirical work.