The Bounded Corridor_Life as Persistence Under Joint Constraint

Abstract This book develops a structural interpretation of biology centered on persistence under joint admissibility. Rather than treating living systems primarily as optimizers, it argues that organisms, tissues, cells, and ecosystems remain viable by maintaining coupled variables within jointly admissible regions despite continual internal turnover and external perturbation. The framework is presented as an interpretive biological lens grounded in established empirical biology while remaining explicitly separated from the underlying formal program. The opening chapters distinguish the structural foundations from their biological application, and the text consistently marks empirical facts, derived interpretations, open questions, and explicitly rejected claims. Across energy metabolism, membranes, genomes, development, immunity, cancer, aging, and ecology, the corridor perspective reframes biological persistence as the maintenance of admissible transformations rather than optimization toward a single objective. The concluding chapters propose an empirical research program and identify measurable predictions concerning corridor geometry, coupled feasibility, persistence failure, and regime-dependent biological transitions. The book does not replace evolutionary theory, systems biology, or physiology; instead, it offers a unifying structural perspective through which existing biological mechanisms can be interpreted as different projections of persistence under joint admissibility.