A Nature of Variations Making Evolution Possible

An externalist discourse on evolutionary process proceeding through selective retention of slightly modified heritable traits requires a generator of variations to be subjected to natural selection. This externalist classification takes the generation of variations to be totally independent of the subsequents elective processes. Prior variations are functionally symmetric in keeping the cause and the effect of the variations mutually interchangeable, otherwise they would be temporally asymmetric and evolutionary by themselves. The operation of natural selection that makes those symmetric variations temporally asymmetric in the effect is upon the accumulation of the preceding variations of similar nature. Natural selection viewed from the externalist perspective refers to a functional characteristic pertaining to the accumulated variations. Natural selection as a consequence of the accumulated variations is grounded upon the very accumulation process. Further elucidation of the accumulation process can be made by switching to the internalist stance.

What is unique to the internalist stance is to make both the operations of generating variations and natural selection inseparable. Variations are genrated in the process of identifying the variations already made. The generation is in and of itself selective since the variations that could occur at whatever internal observers depend upon how the preceding variations could come to be observed and identified by the observers in the absence of the global perspective. The variations thus perceived can be embodied in the form of suppliers and consumers of resources of evolutionary significance. The internal observers functioning as either suppliers or consumers are both generative and selective. Natural selection can be seen as a consequence of the interplay among the internal observers aiming at necessary resources. The internalist stance grounds itself upon observation and measurement proceeding internally on material basis. Variations resulting in natural selection are a demonstration of the internalist stance par excellence.

Evolution is a mode of natural dynamics, in which many participants interact with each other. In particular, any dynamics can identify itself by explicating how it addresses itself to the following two questions. (l) How does each participant come to detect others? (2) How does each move with and act upon others ? The Galilean-Newtonian mechanics concentrates on the second question on movement dynamics by dismissing the significance of the first question on detection dynamics only except for mentioning its role of identifiing the initial conditions. Thermodynamics, on the other hand, emphasizes the role of detection dynamics as demonstrated in its second law stating that if the process of detection proceeds only locally as it should, movement dynamics would necessarily exhibit an irreversible enhancement of randomization. We note that any detection dynamics proceeding internally is local in the sense that complete identification of evolving systems in a globally simultaneous manner is not attainable. Detection dynamics of necessarily local character comes to imply that there is an inevitable time-delay between detecting others in the neighborhood and acting upon them accordingly. The time-delay between detection and action perceived by each participant, or in the eyes of the participants, serves as a causative factor of evolutionary dynamics of any type. Most indicative of the time-delay between detection and action is heterotrophic activity, in the latter of which an arbitrary participant in an evolutionary process has the capacity of taking in necessary material resources as responding to detecting what its neighborhood looks like. Although it leaves behind only material flow continuity, heterotrophic activity as the capacity of wanting material resources for the sake of the continuity in the record is an agency connecting between detection and movement dynamics.