Natural drift

Summary

Natural drift is Maturana and Mpodozis's evolutionary account centred on the conservation and diversification of organism–niche relations. It explicitly contests accounts which make natural selection the directing mechanism.

Implications for practice

Natural drift offers a specific theoretical account of evolutionary diversification in which conservation of organisation and structural change are central. It is included as a scoped and contestable account, not as field-wide biological consensus.

Key distinctions

• viability vs comparative fitness
• structural drift vs externally directing pressure
• organism–niche relation vs organism alone
• theory proposal vs consensus

Historical development

• Maturana and Mpodozis
• autopoiesis
• structural coupling
• biology of cognition

Ideas it depends on

• autopoiesis
• adaptation
• structural coupling
• lineage

Further developments

• natural phylogenic drift
• co-drift
• survival of the viable formulation

Connections to practice

• caution in importing evolutionary metaphors into organisations
• distinguishing persistence from optimisation

Common confusions

• natural drift is ordinary genetic drift
• the article abolishes selection as an observed consequence
• the theory can be transferred directly to organisations

Further checks

• add contemporary biological criticism and reception
• separate the 1992 and 2000 formulations
• trace uses in cybernetics without laundering metaphor into fact

Recorded connections

Check the wording, direction, scope, sources, and status of a connection before relying on it.

• Natural drift was formulated by Humberto Maturana

  Status: accepted · Relation: formulated by

  The wording is limited to the named public sources. Bibliographic inclusion and organisational association do not establish wider intellectual influence.

  Locator: Release 0.12 public practitioner and publication sources

  • The origin of species by means of natural drift (checked with contestation note)

• Natural drift was formulated by Jorge Mpodozis

  Status: accepted · Relation: formulated by

  The wording is limited to the named public sources. Bibliographic inclusion and organisational association do not establish wider intellectual influence.

  Locator: Release 0.12 public practitioner and publication sources

  • The origin of species by means of natural drift (checked with contestation note)

• Natural drift challenges the selection mechanism assumed by Evolutionary cybernetics

  Status: accepted · Relation: challenges

  Natural drift challenges natural selection as the generative mechanism of evolutionary history. This comparison does not imply that it rejects every claim in evolutionary cybernetics.

  Locator: Maturana & Mpodozis abstract, paragraphs 35–36; Principia introduction, paragraphs 4–5

  • The origin of species by means of natural drift (checked with contestation note)
  • Introduction to Principia Cybernetica (checked)

Sources and passage locators

• The origin of species by means of natural drift (checked with contestation note)
• Introduction to Principia Cybernetica (checked)

Cite this entry

Taylor, B. P. (2026). Natural drift. The Necessary Tangle, release 0.35. https://transduction.systems/entries/concept_natural_drift/

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