A New Unifying Vision of Evolution.

Genes are to life what neurochemical changes are to love: just one part of the tale and not even the best part. By taking the part for the whole, scientific reductionism has established a harmful paradigmatic blindness that impedes understanding evolution in its real dimension. Contrary to what the gene-centric vision postulates, organisms do not evolve passively through a mere random accumulation of genetic mutations. Nor is it mere chance that breathes life into inanimate matter. A new vision in evolution is emerging, one that offers a better and more compelling explanation:

All living beings are search engines for new adaptive properties, and from this fundamental, sine qua non condition arises the creative, purposeful and intelligent character of life.

Inferred from current scientific data, this far-reaching hypothesis clarifies not only the main unsolved questions of current evolutionary theory, such as the rise of complexity, the emergence of purpose and the appearance of intelligent designers from non-intelligent dynamics, but also the reason and natural roots from which human rampant cultural evolution unfolds. The argument is parsimonious and highly consilient. Almost nothing new is invented. The data is simply organized under the light of the appropriate interpretive key. Following this light, not only the origin of life, but also the singular development of our species and the cultural trajectory of human history can be intertwined in a unified evolutionary framework.