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  "release": "0.35",
  "citation": "Taylor, B. P. (2026). Natural drift. The Necessary Tangle, release 0.35. https://transduction.systems/entries/concept_natural_drift/",
  "licence": "CC BY-SA 4.0 for original atlas text and data; linked works retain their own terms",
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    "label": "Natural drift",
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    "description": "Maturana and Mpodozis's account of evolution as the conservation and diversification of organism–niche relations through structural drift, with natural selection treated as a consequence of that history rather than its directing mechanism.",
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      "natural phylogenic drift",
      "natural evolutionary drift"
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    "canonical_definition": "Maturana and Mpodozis's account of evolution as the conservation and diversification of organism–niche relations through structural drift, with natural selection treated as a consequence of that history rather than its directing mechanism.",
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    "node_id": "concept_natural_drift",
    "title": "Natural drift",
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    "canonical_definition": "Maturana and Mpodozis's account of evolution as the conservation and diversification of organism–niche relations through structural drift, with natural selection treated as a consequence of that history rather than its directing mechanism.",
    "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.",
    "why_it_matters": "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_lineage": [
      "Maturana and Mpodozis",
      "autopoiesis",
      "structural coupling",
      "biology of cognition"
    ],
    "logical_antecedents": [
      "autopoiesis",
      "adaptation",
      "structural coupling",
      "lineage"
    ],
    "dependent_subsequents": [
      "natural phylogenic drift",
      "co-drift",
      "survival of the viable formulation"
    ],
    "practice_connections": [
      "caution in importing evolutionary metaphors into organisations",
      "distinguishing persistence from optimisation"
    ],
    "espoused_lineages": [],
    "observed_clusters": [],
    "common_misreadings": [
      "natural drift is ordinary genetic drift",
      "the article abolishes selection as an observed consequence",
      "the theory can be transferred directly to organisations"
    ],
    "open_checks": [
      "add contemporary biological criticism and reception",
      "separate the 1992 and 2000 formulations",
      "trace uses in cybernetics without laundering metaphor into fact"
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    "last_researched": "2026-08-11",
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    "reviewed_by": "Benjamin P Taylor",
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    "editorial_note": "Developed from the cited primary scholarly source and presented with an explicit contestation note."
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      "id": "src_maturana_mpodozis_natural_drift_2000",
      "title": "The origin of species by means of natural drift",
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