Persistent Forms: A Computational Lineage from Pythagoras to Kolmogorov Theory
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: This note reads Kolmogorov Theory (KT) as the latest station of a single, long argument about persistent form. Pythagoras intuits that reality has intelligible, ratio-like structure; Plato makes structure — not matter — the carrier of identity; Aristotle brings form down into matter as the organization of a living substance and names its self-maintaining directedness entelechy; Kant shows that objects and experience are synthesized across time; Schopenhauer adds the striving pole; and Turing with algorithmic information theory supplies the finite mechanism and the measure. KT gathers these into one claim: an agent is a persistent algorithmic form — a bounded, compressive self-and-world model M_t(A,W) maintained through material turnover by regulation, evaluated by an objective function, and selected through the filter of time. On this reading KT is a computational hylomorphism: form is the bounded self-code, and telehomeostasis (π* = arg max E[Pers]) is a computational version of Aristotelian entelechy and final cause. Compactly: Aristotle gives the ontology of patterns, Kant the epistemology of patterns, and KT their computational dynamics. This is an essay-length lineage map; the program's two longer philosophical statements — WP0005 (Algorithmic Experiential Structural Platonism) and WP0080 (The Algorithmic Weltanschauung) — carry the full metaphysics.
Authors: Ruffini, Giulio, Castaldo, Francesca
Institution: Neuroelectrics Barcelona SLU (Spain)
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7166680903