Environment
Environment is the set of external conditions and relations relevant to the system and question being studied.
No adaptive claim is meaningful without specifying enough of the environment to determine what consequences, constraints, and opportunities the system actually faces.
Environment is not simply "everything outside." Its operational boundary depends on the system boundary, timescale, variables, and task under study.
The framework uses the environment to keep several distinctions explicit:
- internal model ≠ external reality;
- regulation ≠ successful adaptation;
- retained capability ≠ current applicability;
- performance in one tested environment ≠ universal capability.