Computation as Organisation

Abstract: Computation is commonly defined as the execution of abstract algorithms over symbolic representations, with physical systems treated as substrates that realise predefined operations. While effective for engineered machines, this separation becomes problematic when applied to living systems, where persistence, adaptation, and failure occur without symbolic instruction or central control. Here, computation is reformulated as a structural property of organised matter. Organisation is defined as the persistence of relational constraints that delimit admissible state transitions. Information is not encoded content but relational invariance: differences that influence future behaviour by reshaping what transitions remain possible. Computation is identified with the ongoing enactment of such organisation, integrating memory, processing, and execution as inseparable aspects of material dynamics. Within this framework, algorithms correspond to internally embedded regularities enabled by constraint, and computational limits arise from organisation itself. The account provides experimentally accessible criteria for computation based on persistence, recovery, and structural failure under perturbation.