ALife: The Nervous System as the 3-Pullback between the Brain and Physicality

Nick Rossiter
Computer Science
University of Northumbria
rossiternick1169@gmail.com
https://nickrossiter.org.uk/process

Presented at ANPA 47, University of Manchester, 5 August 2026 

In previous work on Artificial Life the nervous system as a whole was considered in categorical terms to be the connection between the neural networks of the brain and the physical actions of the body. In the current paper the nervous system will be explored in detail, looking at the Central Nervous System, which includes the brain and the spinal chord, and the Peripheral Nervous System, which controls the nerves in the rest of the body. Nerves are considered to involve both digital and analogue components, the former considered to involve categories such as Cartesian with signals for pathways and the latter considered to involve continuous categories such as vector spaces with graded, or weighted signals. This work will expand the higher-order category theory developed at the end of last year's ANPA presentation.