Denis Noble’s Biological Relativity and Jong Bhak’s Covolution Theory: From Multilevel Physiology to Symvironmental Directionality

Denis Noble decentralizes evolutionary causation away from genes and toward multilevel physiology.
Jong Bhak’s covolution theory goes further by treating life as a direction-setting, symvironment-entangled information-control process.

Noble is mainly a systems-physiology reformer of evolutionary theory. Covolution is a broader information-cybernetic theory of life, evolution, aging, and quasi-living systems.

1. Noble: evolution through biological relativity

Denis Noble’s central idea is biological relativity: there is no privileged level of causation in biology.
Genes, proteins, cells, tissues, organs, organisms, and environments all participate in causal loops.
Noble explicitly argues against the idea that genes are the master program of life. In his biological relativity framework, causation flows upward and downward across biological levels. (PMC)

In simple form:

Noble: evolution cannot be explained from genes alone, because organisms are multilevel physiological systems that use genes, regulate genes, buffer genes, and reshape the conditions under which genes matter.

This is very close to Jong Bhak's (any many others) criticism of gene-centered Darwinism.

2. Bhak’s covolution: evolution as organism-symvironment computation

Bhak's covolution theory makes a stronger and more general claim:

Covolution: living systems actively compute, bias, construct, and redirect their own evolutionary trajectories through internal architecture, control information, and symvironmental coupling.

The key concept here is symvironment. For Noble, the environment is important, but his main emphasis is the organism as a multilevel physiological system. For covolution, the organism and environment are not merely interacting. They are entangled into a living informational field that helps generate future biological states.

So Noble says:

The organism is not reducible to genes.

Covolution says:

The organism and symvironment together form a direction-setting information-control system.

3. Noble emphasizes physiology; covolution emphasizes informational directionality

Noble’s key unit is the organism as a physiological whole.

Bhak’s key unit is the covolving organism-symvironment information system.

Noble asks:

How do multilevel physiological processes constrain, regulate, and reinterpret genetic causation?

Covolution asks:

How does a living system use information to stabilize itself, repair itself, age, reproduce, expand, and generate future attractor states?

So Noble is mainly fighting genetic reductionism. Covolution is trying to build a larger theory of living directionality.

4. Noble is phenotype-first; covolution is entelenomic

Noble often argues for a phenotype-first or organism-first view of evolution.
The phenotype is not just the output of genes. It is an active causal agent.
His work repeatedly challenges the metaphor of the genome as a blueprint or program.
A recent systems biology statement attributed to Noble summarizes this sharply: “The genome is a database, not itself a program.” (physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com)

Covolution agrees with this but goes further.
It treats the organism not only as phenotype-first, but as entelenomic: internally structured toward maintaining, redirecting, and propagating itself.

In Bhak's terms:

Noble’s organism uses genes.
Covolution’s organism uses genes, symvironment, memory, control information, and attractor architecture to set direction.

5. Noble keeps evolution biological; covolution extends into quasi-living systems

Noble’s framework is mainly about biological organisms, physiology, medicine, and evolutionary theory. His major examples often come from heart physiology, systems biology, genetics, epigenetics, and organismal causation. He is especially known for early mathematical modeling of cardiac pacemaker activity and for showing that physiological rhythms arise from interlocking control networks rather than one simple genetic program. (Oxford 2026 Evolution Conference)

Covolution can include those, but it also wants to extend beyond classical organisms into:

quasi-living systems, information objects, artificial systems, social systems, AI-bio hybrids, aging-control systems, and covolutionary information universes.

That is a major expansion. Noble is revolutionary inside biology. Covolution is trying to become a general theory of living and quasi-living information systems.

6. Aging and gerostasis are important in covolution, not in Noble

Noble’s theory is highly relevant to aging because aging is obviously multilevel: genome, epigenome, metabolism, immune system, tissue architecture, physiology, and organismal behavior all interact. But aging is not the central organizing problem of Noble’s evolutionary theory.

In Bhak's covolution framework, aging (including development) is important. 

So:

Noble helps explain why aging cannot be reduced to genes.
Covolution tries to measure how living systems lose or recover directional control over aging.

That is a big difference.

7. Selection: Noble weakens gene-centered selection; covolution internalizes selection

Noble does not deny natural selection.
But he argues that standard evolutionary theory gives too much causal privilege to genes and random genetic variation. His biological relativity view removes this privilege and gives causal importance to physiology, development, epigenetics, and organismal agency. (PMC)

Covolution goes further by treating selection as only one part of a broader living computation.
Selection is not merely an external filter. It is entangled with the organism’s own activities, niche construction, internal regulation, symvironmental feedback, and direction-setting.

In short:

Concise conclusion

Noble’s theory says:

Evolution must be understood through multilevel organismal physiology, not through genes alone.

Jong Bhak’s covolution theory says:

Evolution must be understood as a directional, information-control process in which organisms and symvironments co-create future biological states.

Therefore, Noble is a multilevel physiological reformer of evolution, while covolution is a broader cybernetic-informational theory of life’s directionality.

Noble removes the genome from the throne.
Covolution tries to explain what takes its place: the whole living system, coupled to its symvironment, using control information to maintain and redirect itself through time.