A Structuralist View of Biological Origins

Contemporary biology is structured by ideas whose proximal roots lie in the 19th century, a century dedicated to historical, utilitarian, and mechanical explanations. Time, utility, and mechanism therefore lie heavily upon this natural science. This is reflected in the dominant positions of genetics and the theory of evolution, which are regarded as the twin pillars of modern biology. Genetics concerns itself with the properties and the behavior of the heriditary material which consists of those “instructions” found by trial and error to generate useful, or successful, mechanisms (parts of organisms); while evolution describes how these instructions change in time under the action of various contingencies, described as random variation in the genetic material and selection pressures on the useful mechanisms generated by it. These selection pressures define the interaction between the organism, or more strictly its parts, and the external environment, also defined by contingencies. This interaction is interpreted in terms of the metaphors of conflict, competition, and survival of the fittest. Historical continuity, linking all organisms in an unbroken chain back to the hypothetical primordial ancestor, arises from the self-replicating property of the hereditary material which is considered to underly organismic reproduction.