A living individual is an object of this world that tends to conserve its own identity, independently from the fluctuations of the rest of the world [ENVIRONMENT]. And the environment does indeed change. ADAPTATION is the ability to withstand the typical changes of the environment. INDEPENDENCE [or ADAPTABILITY] is the ability to withstand new changes. ADAPTATION refers to the certainty of the environment, ADAPTABILITY to its uncertainty.
They are not the same thing. We could even say that more of the former means less of the latter.
The uncertainty of the world is its greatest certainty.
So if there is a one question worth asking, it is this:
HOW CAN ONE STAY ALIVE IN AN UNCERTAIN ENVIRONMENT?
Perhaps the key to understanding biological evolution is not the concept of ADAPTATION but that of INDEPENDENCE. The idea is promising, because physics and mathematics, their laws and theorems, operate not in terms of ADAPTATION but of INDEPENDENCE.
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I felt an urge to re-read some notes of mine from my older journals. This introductory note of Jorge Wagensbergs paper on the three states of independence really caught my attention back then and made me re-read it now after 4 years after first discovering it... Re-reading the material with a fresh pair of eyes made me see much more in those sentences, now filtering his statements through Ilya Prigogene's theory of irreversible thermodynamics and Fritjof Capra's Minimal life's statements.
