Biology as Persistent Coherence

This paper extends the Unityverse Model—a selection-first ontological framework—into the biological domain by treating living systems as persistent coherence configurations rather than collections of independent components. No new ontological primitives are introduced. Instead, biological structure and function emerge from recursive coherence clustering, integration maximization, and trace-order compression within a shared selection manifold.Macromolecular folding is formalized as relaxation toward high-integration attractor basins, providing a coherence-guided resolution of the Levinthal paradox. Self-replication is interpreted as trace-order compression onto nucleic acid substrates, biasing future dynamics toward historically successful configurations. Metabolism, development, and evolutionary dynamics arise naturally as coherence maintenance processes operating far from equilibrium.The framework is thermodynamically compatible: coherence enters only as an entropic bias over physically accessible microstates and does not modify energy conservation or molecular laws. Integrated information (Φ) and trace order (𝓘) are defined formally, and experimentally tractable proxies are provided.A central contribution of the paper is a Unityverse-compatible therapeutic discovery framework. Disease is modeled as trapping within maladaptive, low-integration attractor basins or as collapse of cross-scale coherence. Therapeutic interventions—molecular or non-molecular—are ranked by their ability to restore integration, long-range coupling, and historical stability while minimizing collateral decoherence. Phase structure, timing (coherence windows), and sequential control are identified as causal variables rather than secondary effects.Six quantitative, falsifiable biological predictions are presented, including phase-structured perturbation effects on folding kinetics, symmetry-dependent assembly stability, reduced pathway diversity under enhanced coherence, and correlations between mutation rate and nuclear coherence geography. These predictions distinguish coherence-based emergence from purely local energetic explanations and are accessible to current experimental technology.This work is intended as a theory-driven, empirically testable contribution to theoretical biology, systems medicine, and foundations-level approaches to biological organization.