Adaptive Know-How in Evolution
The MIT Press eBooks · 2024
How can the past inform the pre sent about the future?This is a question that any theory of evolution, including both standard evolutionary theory (SET) and niche construction theory (NCT), must address.So how does natu ral se lection inform organisms in evolving populations?Strictly speaking, that is the wrong question.Biologists usually think of natu ral se lection as a blind and purposeless process. 1 Natu ral se lection alone cannot be a source of "meaningful" information for organisms.By itself, it does not supply the know-how, or R i , that organisms need to adapt to their environments.For R i to accumulate, there must also be pro cesses that generate heritable phenotypic variation.What about the genes that are carried by organisms?Unless they have been subject to prior natu ral se lection, genes cannot inform organisms either.New gene variants typically arise through chance-based mutations.Such mutations cannot inform organisms, except by accident, and then only extremely rarely.Only in combination with natu ral se lection, can the genes that organisms inherit from their ancestors become a source of adaptive know-how, or R i .For this to be pos si ble, natu ral se lection must be biased toward the differential inheritance of the ge ne tic variants of fit organisms, in each generation, in evolving populations.The genes that organisms inherit from their ancestors may then be able to supply organisms in the current generation of a population with deductive know-how, or R i , about which phenotypic traits were adaptive for their ancestors in the past.This R i is deductive because it is deduced from ADAPTIVE KNOW-HOW IN EVOLUTION