Autopoiesis and evolution: the role of organisms in natural drift

Abstract

Genetic reductionism is increasingly seen as a severely limited approach to understanding living systems. The Neo-Darwinian explanatory framework tends to overlook the role of the organism for an understanding of development and evolution. In the current fast-changing theoretical landscape, the autopoietic approach provides conceptual distinctions and tools that may contribute to building an alternative framework. In this article, I examine the implications of the theories of autopoiesis and natural drift for an organism-centered view of evolution. By shifting the attention from genes to ontogenetic organism-niche configurations and their transformations over generations, this approach presents a compelling perspective on the role of organismal behavior in guiding phylogenetic drift.

Autopoiesis, Thermodynamics, and the Natural Drift of Living Beings: Another Way to the New Evolutionary Synthesis

“…From such a non-teleological ontology, the autopoietic theory extracts NDT; an evolutionary approach that, as it has been already observed by some commentators [ 49 , 50 ], aligns with NES’s general spirit.…”

“…Several decades ago, the autopoietic theory elaborated NDT, which advanced some of the key ideas of the NES program [ 36 , 37 , 38 , 41 ]. As Raimondi observes, “[s]ince the early 1970s, the autopoietic approach has challenged genocentrism” ([ 50 ], p. 513) and argued for the centrality of the organism in evolution (see also [ 49 ]). The autopoietic theory sets the organism at the center of the biological theory (i) with respect to evolution itself, in the sense of giving primacy to the existence of the organism over the phenomenon of evolution (first organism, then evolution), and (ii) within evolutionary theory, in the sense of rejecting the reductionist gene-centric stance of MS, placing the organism and its behavior as genuine evolutionary factors.…”

Sense-Making in the Wild: The Historical and Ecological Depth of Enactive Processes of Life and Cognition

“…This ontogenesis occurs thanks to the dynamical constraints that the very processes of development cause (Dupré, 2012). Hence, when the new organism becomes autonomous and independent of the parental organism, it has already developed a particular way to make sense of the world that is not independent of its ontogenesis (Corris, 2022; Raimondi, 2021). The developmental pathway of an A-E is shaped by its materiality and dynamical constraints, resulting from its interactions with other agents and its developmental niche (Griffiths & Stotz, 2018).…”

Enativismo e Psicologia Moral: Aprendendo (Juntos) a Ser Gente

“…A evolução da perspectiva enativa é conceptualizada como uma "deriva natural" (natural drift). Como recentemente argumentado (Raimondi, 2021;Rolla & Figueiredo, 2021;Werner, 2020), em convergência com a Síntese Estendida da Evolução (Reis & Araújo, 2019), em especial a teoria de construção de nicho (Laland et al, 2000), enativistas destacam que não só organismos mudam para adaptarem-se ao ambiente, ambientes também mudam em decorrência das ações dos organismos; portanto, organismos e ambiente co-evoluem. A natureza não é ela mesma algo fixo, mas em se encontra em constante transformação (mesmo que tais transformações não sejam imediatamente percebidas).…”