1. Registry Header

2. Short Definition

Global Coherence is coherence preserved across the wider relevant system boundary, including downstream effects, excluded nodes, future recurrence, and hidden debt pathways.

3. Canonical Definition

In UTS, Global Coherence describes the degree to which identity, meaning, and functional integrity are preserved across the full boundary relevant to the claim, action, system, or basin being evaluated.

Global coherence requires local coherence to remain valid when broader costs, dependencies, time horizons, and affected nodes are included.

4. Canonical Rule

Global coherence requires boundary expansion until hidden debt export is visible.

A global coherence claim is not valid if it depends on excluding damaged nodes, delayed costs, suppressed recurrence, or unmeasured downstream burden.

5. UTS Function

Global coherence provides the counterweight to narrow optimization.

It asks:

Does this still remain coherent when the whole relevant system is included?

This makes it central to scaling, governance, economy, medicine, AI, justice, ecology, and institutional design.

6. Diagnostic Requirements

To evaluate global coherence, inspect:

• affected nodes
• hidden dependencies
• externalized costs
• future recurrence
• repair capacity
• boundary validity
• cross-layer effects
• legitimacy under audit
• field-level consequences
• whether Φ remains subordinate to O

7. Healthy Signature

O_global↑ or stable
H_total↓
R_total sufficient
BΣ across affected nodes preserved or repaired
Au across boundary adequate
Τ validates over recurrence

8. Failure Signature

O_local↑
Φ_local↑
H_total↑
R_downstream overloaded
BΣ_external damaged
O_global↓

9. Distinctions

10. Restoration Implications

Restoration aims to move from local success toward global coherence by reducing hidden debt export, strengthening boundary validity, restoring auditability, and aligning repair capacity with the true cost field.

Typical sequence:

expand boundary
→ trace hidden debt
→ identify affected nodes
→ restore auditability
→ allocate repair capacity
→ validate through recurrence

11. Example

A medical intervention may reduce a visible symptom locally. A global coherence evaluation asks whether the person’s resilience, energy, recurrence pattern, side-effect burden, boundary conditions, and long-term function are also improving.

12. Non-Example

A policy that improves a dashboard metric while increasing burden on unmeasured populations, future budgets, or downstream ecosystems is not globally coherent.

13. Machine-Readable Summary

id: GL-050
term: "Global Coherence"
definition_short: "Coherence preserved across the wider relevant system boundary."
canonical_rule: "Boundary must expand until hidden debt export is visible."
healthy_signature:
  - "O_global stable or rising"
  - "H_total decreasing"
  - "R_total sufficient"
  - "BΣ preserved or repaired"
  - "Au adequate across boundary"
  - "Τ validates recurrence"
not_equivalent_to:
  - "total control"
  - "local success at scale"
  - "low visible error"