Recursive Collapse as a Mechanism for the Prokaryote-to-Eukaryote Transition

The transition from prokaryotes to eukaryotes represents one of the most dramatic evolutionary leaps in the history of life, involving an extraordinary increase in structural and symbolic complexity. While endosymbiotic theory provides a compelling narrative of this transition, it does not fully account for the deep integration and reorganization of regulatory and informational systems. Here, we propose that the Recursive Collapse Model (RCM) offers a complementary and potentially unifying explanatory framework. We suggest that the fusion of two semi-independent prokaryotic lineages resulted in symbolic and regulatory overload, ultimately triggering a collapse-reconfiguration event. This event, characterized by recursive saturation and structural reorganization, set the stage for the emergence of the eukaryotic cell. We assess this hypothesis using analogical, empirical, and comparative biological evidence.