Four Domains: Cognition-Based Evolution

Abstract

It has been previously asserted that self-referential cognition is the exact definition of the living circumstances. Once granted, this becomes the requisite platform for understanding biological development and its evolutionary ramifications over geological space–time. It is our human nature to be riveted by the expanse of intricate forms that can be appraised with our unaided senses. The dramatic transitions across the fossil record that focus on these macro-organic forms reinforce this prejudice. Who doesn’t love to think about dinosaurs? Yet, despite this ready assessment, the planet has ever been and remains a cellular world (McFall-Ngai et al. 2013). As such, it becomes incumbent to explore this stance in its fullest extent. The complete scope of the currently available evidence indicates that all life is ever enacted at the level of individual cells, even within holobionts. Therefore, the cellular form has living primacy. At the macro-organic level, life is sustained through collaborative associations that extend across four perpetual biological domains: Bacteria, Archaea, Eukaryota, and the Virome (Miller 2013, 2016a, b, 2017; Richter and King 2013; Cai et al. 2015; Torday and Miller 2016a; Miller and Torday 2018). Thus, biological and evolutionary development are the narrative of the mix and match of those perpetual four domains.