This essay investigates a recurrent structural motif—what we term structural incompleteness—appearing across formal logic, empirical science, and contemplative practice. Gödel’s incompleteness theorems articulate formal limits within axiomatic systems; Popper’s fallibilism shows the provisional nature of empirical knowledge; Zen practice reveals lived limits on conceptual and self-referential certainty. Physics offers additional examples in puzzles surrounding Mach’s principle and recent theoretical work suggesting undecidability in physical models (Faizal et al., 2025). These patterns suggest that incompleteness is not an obstacle to be eliminated, but a constitutive feature of systems capable of self-reference. We propose minimal operational criteria for Structural Incompleteness Theory (SIT), describe how it spans these domains, and outline directions for further study. Continue reading Beyond Computation: Incompleteness in Logic, Science, and Zen