Morphological stability and identity in self-organizing systems

Abstract

In this essay I aim to investigate and discuss the process through which bundles of things "self-organize" into other things. In particular, I engage in such investigation by trying to apply a framework of analysis of structural stability of morphological forms to the context of a continuous cellular automata known as $\textit{Lenia}$, which displays great diversity of distinguishable, individuated complex subsystems, who behave autonomously and in lifelike manner (such subsystems are often known as $\textit{solitons}$). I do so in order to suggest a path to the development of methods to formally distinguish said subsystems from their environment.