第四章_进化与选择

Chapter Four Evolution and Selection: The Road to the Complexity of Agency

Natural selection has no purpose.

Evolution has no direction, no endpoint, and no goal. But it presents an inescapable fact:

Only structures capable of surviving and reproducing in the environment are preserved.

Here, we must guard against the teleological trap. We must carefully rewrite a commonly misused statement:

• ❌ "Structures possessing agency are more likely to be preserved"
• ✅ "Those structures capable of achieving survival and inheritance in the environment—which include functions of agency—are preserved"

The difference is: the former implies that "agency" is the goal of evolution; the latter clarifies that "agency" is merely one of the functional properties of the selected structures.

Agency is not something that is "favored"; it is simply a functional expression of living structures confronting their environment:

• Adapting to the environment
• Modifying the environment
• Evading threats
• Acquiring resources

Thus:

The environment selects species, and it selects agency as well.

Agency does not exist in a vacuum; it is always attached to concrete life forms. Evolution preserves structures, without favoring agency—yet structures carry agency.