Major boundary rounds

Some lines came back. Some changed.

Each round keeps the evidence and asks whether the inherited category still earns its explanatory office.

Time / energy / matter / gravity

The equations survived.

What we removed
The assumption that inherited physical nouns must be fundamental primitives.
What survived
Established quantitative physics and its native mathematical distinctions.
What changed
The nouns can be inspected as explanatory handles without pretending the exercise derived new physics.
Status
NEGATIVE / BOUNDED RESULT Useful conceptual compression, not new physics.

Tangible / intangible

Ask what carries the consequence.

What we removed
The tangible/intangible label as the primary causal explanation.
What survived
Material differences and the need for a present physical or functional carrier.
What changed
An encoded rule, contract, learned association, or stored bit can alter futures through presently instantiated structure.
Status
WORKING HYPOTHESIS No proof of physicalism or identity.

Biotic / abiotic

Find the organizational transition.

What we removed
The word "living" as if it already explained the causal discontinuity.
What survived
Self-maintenance, restoration, closure, adaptation, and recoverable viable routes.
What changed
Life became a measurable transition question rather than an assumed substance.
Status
HYPOTHESIS Cross-substrate continuity remains unproven.

Memory / structure

Retention must change a future response.

What we removed
Memory as a separately stored object.
What survived
Durable event-dependent difference with later causal consequences.
What changed
Scar tissue, hysteresis, configuration, and synaptic change become primitive history-retention examples without becoming autobiographical memory.
Status
CANDIDATE RECONSTRUCTION

Intelligence / adaptation

A crack is not intelligent.

What we removed
The intelligence label as an unexplained threshold.
What survived
Retention, adaptation, prediction, counterfactual selection, and revision of reachable futures.
What changed
Intelligence became a graded candidate ladder with explicit additional operations.
Status
CANDIDATE Standard cognitive science has not been replaced.

Organism / environment

The boundary may follow the closure.

What we removed
Skin or component inventory as an automatic system boundary.
What survived
Dependencies required to maintain the organization.
What changed
Symbiosis, colonies, and infrastructure-dependent systems become closure-boundary questions.
Status
CANDIDATE EXPLANATORY MOVE

Not every comparison closes.

Correspondence statuses include identical value, formal equivalence, structural correspondence, witnessed simulation, shared signature only, unsupported, and incomparable. A resemblance is not a discovery.