The Meaning Behind Systems — A unified geometry for the development of systems through signal construction, perception, interpretation, and behavioral dynamics.

The Meaning Behind Systems v2 is a formal consolidation of the original The Meaning Behind Systems framework. Version 1 introduced a substrate-agnostic ontology for describing how systems construct meaning through signals, perception, interpretation, behavior, and internal-state development. Version 2 preserves that lineage while refining the framework into a more explicit developmental architecture. The central claim of this version is that systems do not primarily develop through elapsed clock time. They develop through interval states. Signals occupy intervals, internal states update through event-drift cycles, behavior feeds back into the system, and cumulative impact reshapes the geometry from which future meaning is constructed. This release formalizes developmental interval principles, signal occupancy, signal blocks, graph-embedded meaning geometry, elasticity, basin depth, perception and interpretation layers, behavior selection, and dual event-drift updating. A plant-instantiated demonstration applies the framework to a dandelion subject progressing from ISD0 to ISD4 across four structured signal blocks. The study shows how signal persistence, overlap, cumulative impact, and internal-state updating allow later developmental states to be forecast from earlier interval structure. Systems v2 is intended as the stabilized individual-level foundation of the broader Meaning Behind framework. Collective or group-level geometry is not fully solved here and is reserved for future Systems v3 work. The immediate purpose of this version is to consolidate the individual ontology so that later papers can more clearly demonstrate the substrate-agnostic structure of the model across plants, humans, artificial systems, and collective systems.