Covolution: A Proposed Neologism
I introduce covolution as a protologism distinct from evolution. The two terms are not synonymous and are not intended to compete.
Biological evolution, in the post-Darwinian sense, is descent with modification under natural selection. Its explanatory unit is the lineage; its mechanism is differential survival and reproduction within a given possibility-space.
Covolution refers to a more general process underlying biological evolution and operating at a lower level of description. It is the directional condensation of information-processing entities through computational mechanisms — most centrally, prediction, distinguishability, and the construction of internal models. Where evolution selects among pre-existing possibilities, covolution generates the very possibility-space within which selection later operates.
Covolution is recursive and fractal. It is recursive because each condensation produces entities that themselves perform further condensation. It is fractal because the same condensation pattern appears across scales — from molecular regulation to cellular differentiation to organismal cognition to ecological co-construction.
In short: evolution explains how organisms change within a possibility-space. Covolution explains how possibility-spaces themselves come to exist.
댓글 0