Cellular-Interval Tests of Operational-Shape Realism: An Exploratory Computational Study of Cellular Automata, Artificial Life, Cell Operation, and Xenoscience

This paper develops an exploratory computational investigation of Operational-Shape Realism across cellular automata, artificial-life-inspired models, and abstract cell-operation systems. Rather than presupposing life, individuality, cognition, or agency as fixed ontological categories, it examines how local transitions, coupling, persistence, fragmentation, intervention, and observational conditions alter subsequent possibilities. The study consolidates Conway’s Game of Life experiments, including 10,000 initializations, counterfactual intervention analyses, and exhaustive evaluation of all 512 local configurations under the B3/S23 rule. The latter identifies non-additive interactions that cannot be fully characterized by first-order local sensitivity alone. Additional experiments investigate parameter-dependent persistence in Lenia-style models, observation-window selection, feedback-based measurement, and diffusion-mediated redistribution of local perturbations. The results establish reproducible computational observations and identify limitations of selected measurement and causal-sensitivity procedures. They do not establish causal individuation, biological cell-operation mechanisms, autonomous scientific discovery, or the empirical validity of Operational-Shape Realism as a whole. The paper distinguishes executed experiments from prospective cross-system tests involving canonical Lenia, Flow-Lenia, Stringmol, and Outlier Cellular Automata. It proposes a comparative research programme for investigating the formation, transformation, and dissolution of operational shapes across heterogeneous systems.