Xenomorphology / Xenophylum

Xenomorphology is a design paradigm that supplements biomimesis by seeking forms with no biological precedent — arising from the xenos of in-silico evolutionary computation (Sims's virtual creatures, Lehman's elbow-walking hexapod) or of literal off-world environments (NASA's self-assembling TESSERAE). The xenophylum is the resulting lineage of forms, built by recombining modular "xenomorphological components" rather than by genetic inheritance; the authors recruit assembly theory's assembly index as the substrate-neutral measure that would make evolution "a programmable process" and a synthetic Cambrian explosion engineerable. Downstream lie xenobehaviorism (analysing the behaviours alien forms engender) and an antifragile method: stress forms adversarially at scale so latent xenobehaviours surface. The compendium abstract calls the same idea xenomimicry.