Stability of arbitrary structures. Its implications for heredity and evolution. Part I.

Abstract

I designate the stance of seeking, in biological processes, essential isomorphism with the phenomena encountered in the human mind, reverse-reductionism, from which I expect to find an alternative way of reconstructing biology. From the axiom that structure (relationship among components) is arbitrary as is known from the Saussurean linguistic theory, it follows that relevant structures in various living processes are potentially multiple rather than unique. Moreover, a structure may take more than one configuration, whose transition should be conceived as transformation. However, structure itself is stable, or invariant by definition, and not subject to transformation. Both structure and its configurations are hereditary in the sense that they bind, with necessity, biological processes including genetic constitution. Such an invisible structure can be maintained dynamically over generations through the constraints imposed on the survival of organisms. Many characters, including genes, in an organism are only cryptically held, and may come to be manifested under certain unusual environmental conditions. Evolution is viewed as configurational transformations and emergence of new structures: once a structure emerges, all of its possible configurations are logically laid down, at the very outset, to channel the future course of its evolution, whose materialization, however, is a matter of contingency.