fieldlike

Fieldlike is an adjective used primarily in physics, mathematics, neuroscience, philosophy, and related disciplines to describe phenomena, models, or representations that resemble a field. In a field-based description, a quantity is defined at every point in a region and can vary smoothly from point to point. Fieldlike descriptions may involve scalar fields (values without direction), vector fields (magnitude and direction), or more general tensor fields.

In physics and applied mathematics, fieldlike models are used when local interactions propagate through space, such as temperature or pressure distributions, magnetic or gravitational fields, and stress fields in continua. They support concepts like locality, continuity, and differential operators such as divergence and curl. A system described as fieldlike is not necessarily a formal field, but it behaves in ways that justify a field-based treatment, especially for collective or spatially extended phenomena.

In neuroscience and cognitive science, neural field models describe activity as a field over cortical space, and attentional or perceptual work can be described as fieldlike representations that vary across a spatial domain rather than at discrete sites.

In philosophy, fieldlike may describe aspects of perception or consciousness that form a unified background or "phenomenal field," rather than a mere sum of discrete experiences.

See also: Field, Scalar field, Vector field, Tensor field, Neural field, Attentional field.