Functional Stability Theory III: Biological Stability and Nash Frustration

A unified framework for biological organization spanning molecular to ecosystem scales, grounded in thermodynamic game theory and the Maximum Entropy Production Principle (MEPP). We argue that biological systems are dissipative structures whose stable configurations can be characterized as Nash equilibria at multiple organizational levels. The framework integrates England's dissipative adaptation theory, Friston's Free Energy Principle, Kauffman's Boolean network dynamics, and classical evolutionary game theory into a coherent hierarchy. As a concrete application, we introduce Nash frustration for protein structures and provide a proof-of-concept test against NMR chemical shift perturbation data (Spearman rho_S = 0.44, p = 0.033, n = 24). Companion paper in the FST series; the programmatic overview is given in FST-IV (Concept-DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20130499). CHANGELOG Version 1.0 (May 2026) Initial release as part of the FST series. v1 stage; future versions (v1.1, ...) will address remaining items per referee moderate-revision verdict: eta-calibration (QUANT-III-2 via BMRB 4428 + McKnight 1996 protection factors), cosmology-section relocation, TP53 mutational analysis with calibrated eta, falsifiable predictions with quantitative thresholds, MEPP-as-heuristic framing. Status: ~7.5/10 readiness per FST series audit.