ANT MILL, MODAL STRUCTURE, AND SYSTEMIC COLLAPSE: A JMAF Aligned Interpretation of a Primary STEM Inquiry

This paper revisits a primary school STEM project that modelled the ant mill—an evolutionary glitch in which army ants become trapped in a self generated circular march that ends in collapse. Students reconstructed the phenomenon using robotics, engineered a disruption mechanism, and trained a machine learning system to detect circular patterns analogous to organisational stagnation. Although the project was originally biological and technological in scope, later reflection reveals that the ant mill exemplifies the structural dynamics described in the Jestin Modal–Actuality Framework (JMAF). Using the refined definitions of modal divergence, constrained indeterminacy, and Jestin’s Constant (J), the ant mill can be understood as a closed modal field descending from MV5 to MV1. Modal Echo, Modal Preference, and Modal Memory—now clarified as manifestations of J rather than organismic behaviours—appear not in the ants themselves but in the loop as a modal structure. The paper clarifies what JMAF contributes beyond systems theory, introduces operational proxies for modal closure and modal injection, and develops the concept of modal recycling to explain why the ant mill collapses without renewal. The result is a philosophically disciplined, empirically grounded account of systemic failure and disruption.