The perception and reconstruction of the apt-organism

Abstract

Abstract The organism-environment relational notion of ‘adaptation’ has, for more than a century, dominated the thinking of English-speaking evolutionary biologists. If a science of form is to be renewed, then the idea of ‘adaptation’, as state of being (hereafter termed aptation ), must be critically examined. It is argued that aptation, as perceived, may lie anywhere on an ideal continuum between a ‘perfect fit’ of organism to environment and a ‘random walk’ of organism in a near infinite environment. Aptation as reconstructed by evolutionary biologists has been consistently positioned toward one end of this continuum. Currently accepted evolutionary models motivate the prevailing experience of aptation and, indeed, critics of the ‘adaptationist programme’ differ from those they criticize not in the way they view aptation but in asserting a plurality of originating mechanisms. Different expressions of aptation—as perceived, not as reconstructed—may be underlaid by differing constellations of extrinsic and intrinsic constraints on organismal form. As the proportion of extrinsic to intrinsic constraints on form shifts from ideal ratios of 1:0 to 0:1, so functionalist methodologies will be less useful, and structuralist and transactionalist methodologies will be more useful, as aids for understanding form.