Environment and individual: a dialectic relationship

The role of development in current neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory is still underestimated. Only a few experimental and theoretical efforts have been made to bridge the gap, among which the theories of genetic assimilation, stabilising selection and autopoiesis. The relationship between the organism and its environment is a focal point for understanding development. The organism itself determines which environmental features are relevant to it, what represents a stimulus that would trigger its behaviour, and continuously affects the environment through its activities, in a dialectic relationship. Such a relationship is unique and diachronic, changing with time and defining the individual. Development in the broad sense and behavioural plasticity refer to the individual unlike evolution, which refers to populations.