The systems I study are not defined only by what they contain or what they can do at one moment. Their histories, dependencies, environments and remaining possibilities can change what they are.
They may have reached the same state through different developmental paths. Those paths can leave different dependencies, different capacities to recover and different futures hidden behind the same behaviour.
Intelligence and capability can extend through bodies, tools, other agents, institutions, infrastructure and environments. A convenient boundary is not always the causal one.
Can the system preserve it, recover it after damage, acquire it again, transfer it, reproduce the conditions that created it or open new possibilities that did not exist before?
Change the history. Remove the scaffold. Rotate the environment. Damage the system. Rebuild it. Change the instrument. The work turns abstract distinctions into experiments that can separate them or destroy them.
The same distinctions recur across intelligent machines, embodied agents, artificial worlds, technological systems and scientific instruments. Sometimes the causal structure transfers. Sometimes the analogy breaks. Both results matter.
The essays and experiments are the public record of that work.