ABSTRACT
The notion that organisms adapt, either through evolution or learning, implies that there is something to which they are being adapted or fitted. Similarly, the notion of adaptation begins with an environment defined without reference to the organism, as a well-defined state of affairs to which the organism becomes adapted. The prominence of organism–environment dualism in the sciences of living things and their capabilities is for good reason: it is compatible with the primary epistemological preconception of Isaac ewton’s mechanics—the dualism of system and environment or, the dualism of states and dynamical laws. In particular, Newton hypothesized that once the system for investigation has been identified, so has the system’s environment. A cornerstone of most attempts to address how one knows the world by sight has been the metaphysical position of dualism. The most famous dualism is that which posits two distinct types of substances—mental and material—characterized by two mutually exclusive sets of properties.
