Evolution as Context-driven Actualization of Potential

While natural selection is often viewed as synonymous with evolution, it is widely felt to be inadequate as a theory of biological evolution; moreover, historically the concept of evolution has not been limited to biology. We propose an integrative framework for characterizing how entities evolve, in which evolution is viewed as a process of context-driven actualization of potential (CAP). Processes of change differ according to the degree of nondeterminism, and the degree to which they are sensitive to, internalize, and depend upon a particular environment or context. The approach enables us to embed phenomena across multiple disciplines into a broader conceptual framework. It suggests that the dynamical evolution of a quantum entity as described by the Schrödinger equation is not fundamentally different from change provoked by a measurement often referred to as collapse but a limiting case, with only one way to collapse. The biological transition to coded replication is seen as a means of preserving structure in the face of context, and sexual replication as a means of increasing potentiality thus enhancing diversity through interaction with context. The integrative framework sheds light on biological concepts like selection and fitness, reveals how exceptional Darwinian evolution is as a means of ‘change of state’, and clarifies in what sense culture (and the creative process underlying it) is and is not Darwinian.