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Deep Dive | Evolution is a way of living
Debate | How organisms drive their own evolution
Critique | Applying Maturana’s Natural Drift to Evolution
Explainer | Drift to Living Coherence
Cinematic | Rebuilding Evolutionary Theory from the Organism Up
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Executive Summary
Maturana and Mpodozis’s theory of natural drift begins from a simple but profound biological question: what is conserved through reproduction? Their answer is not the genome alone, but an ontogenic phenotype–ontogenic niche relation. A lineage arises when this relation is recurrently conserved across generations. In this view, evolution is not merely the change of genes in populations, although genetic change remains indispensable. It is the historical conservation, transformation, and diversification of ways of living (Maturana-Romesin & Mpodozis, 2000).
This paper integrates natural drift with contemporary evolutionary biology. The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis expands evolutionary explanation by foregrounding developmental plasticity, niche construction, inclusive inheritance, reciprocal causation, and evolutionary developmental biology (Laland et al., 2015). Evo-devo shows that development generates the phenotypes that evolve and can bias or constrain evolutionary possibility (Raff, 2000; Müller, 2007). Eco-evo-devo further shows that developmental symbiosis and developmental plasticity contribute to evolution, including by generating selectable variation, facilitating reproductive isolation, and providing raw material for genetic accommodation and niche construction (Gilbert et al., 2015).
The proposed synthesis does not replace population genetics. Population genetics remains essential for understanding allele-frequency change, selection, drift, mutation, recombination, gene flow, quantitative traits, pleiotropy, epistasis, and genetic architecture. Recent work on pleiotropy and epistasis emphasizes that genetic effects are often context-dependent, nonlinear, and embedded in complex genotype–phenotype relations (Mackay & Anholt, 2024).
The core thesis is:
Evolution is the historical conservation, transformation, and diversification of viable organism–niche relations through reproduction, development, behavior, plasticity, niche construction, symbiosis, inclusive inheritance, and population-level genetic sorting.
In this framework, Maturana provides the evolutionary unit of meaning: the conserved way of living. Contemporary evolutionary biology provides the mechanisms through which ways of living are generated, inherited, stabilized, sorted, transformed, and diversified.
Core Components and Mechanisms of Relational Evolutionary Synthesis
Please scroll to the right to see the right columns| Mechanism or Concept | Role in Evolutionary Process | Maturanan Framework Interpretation | Key Mechanism Details | Evolutionary Consequence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Behavior | Acts as an evolutionary operator that selects environments, constructs niches, and stabilizes relations. | The moving edge of structural coupling in evolutionary time; behavior guides encounters and selects which relations are conserved. | Exploration, social learning, niche choice, and socially transmitted practices (amplified by languaging in humans). | Guides the course of natural drift; precedes morphological and genetic change by establishing new ways of living. |
| Niche Construction | Organisms actively modify their environments, altering selection pressures and developmental conditions for themselves and descendants. | The behavioral-ecological expression of structural coupling; niches are co-constituted rather than external containers. | Habitat choice, resource transformation, physical modification (e.g., dam building), and cultural/symbolic construction. | Creates ecological inheritance and reciprocal causation; can lead to evolutionary inertia, diversification, or novel ecological opportunities. |
| Inclusive Inheritance | Transmits more than DNA sequence; conserves the conditions of living across generations through multiple channels. | The historical conservation of the ontogenic phenotype-ontogenic niche relation across generations. | Epigenetic marks, maternal resources, microbiota, ecological modification, behavioral practices, and cultural/institutional systems. | Provides lineage continuity and multi-level inheritance; for humans, cultural and institutional inheritance strongly shape future viability. |
| Evo-Devo | Developmental processes generate phenotypes and can bias or constrain evolutionary possibility. | Development is the ontogenic realization of a way of living; it brings forth the phenotype-niche relation in each life cycle. | Genomic resources, cellular interactions, maternal effects, physical constraints, and environmental signals interact as a self-organizing process. | Generates structured possibilities and biased variation that evolution can then act upon; leads to the production of novel phenotypes. |
| Developmental Plasticity | Enables organisms to remain viable under changing conditions; provides raw material for genetic accommodation. | Structural coupling in ontogenic time; responsive coupling that maintains congruence between organism and medium. | Adjustment of morphology, physiology, or behavior in response to environmental perturbations; multi-pathway responsiveness. | Recurrently conserved plastic responses can become stabilized through genetic accommodation, leading to stabilized adaptation. |
| Symbiosis & Holobionts | Expands the organism beyond the host genome; contributes to organ generation and reproductive isolation. | A conserved way of living that may be host-centered or multi-species depending on the stability of the coupled relations. | Microbial acquisition, metabolic collaboration, immune education, and vertical or horizontal transmission of symbionts. | Expansion of organismic individuality; generates novel traits and can facilitate major evolutionary transitions through multi-species integration. |
| Population Genetics | Accounts for genetic sorting, allele-frequency changes, and the stabilization of variation across lineages. | Describes the genetic consequences and constraints of conserved ways of living; it does not define the living relation itself. | Mutation, recombination, natural selection (as sorting), genetic drift, gene flow, pleiotropy, and epistasis. | Stabilizes and transforms genetic variation; results in the genetic architecture that permits or limits future evolutionary trajectories. |
