Any complex system that seeks not merely to survive, but to evolve in a world governed by chaos must not resist change, but refine itself through it. In conditions of deep uncertainty, it is the ability to adapt and undergo profound internal restructuring - while preserving systemic identity, that becomes the defining criterion of viability. This ability we define as transmorphance.
Unlike resilience, which aims to restore the system to its prior state, transmorphance represents an evolutionary continuation of the system in a new form. Where resilience restores functions, transmorphance reshapes architecture. It is not merely a reaction to threat, but a reconfiguration of trajectories, new contours of stability, and new forms of semantic continuity.
Transmorphance manifests at moments of systemic bifurcation — when return is impossible, and survival demands not stability but inventiveness. The system neither collapses nor regresses nor freezes. Instead, it reassembles itself, altering its internal architecture, functional linkages, and resource flows, while retaining the core invariants that define its identity: goals, values, norms, and ontological foundations.