From Environmental Structure to Biodiversity: The Referential Function of Life

Abstract

Darwinian natural selection explains how advantageous traits become established through differential survival and reproduction, but it provides a less direct explanation for how organisms progressively acquire novel adaptive capacities and generate increasing biological diversity. In this study, I propose that biological evolution and biodiversity should be understood within the broader context of continuous interactions between living systems and environmental structure. Organisms do not merely respond to their environments; they actively acquire, utilize, and modify structured features of their surroundings, thereby creating new adaptive possibilities. The common functional basis underlying these processes is referred to here as referential function, defined as the capacity of living systems to establish and utilize biologically consequential correspondences between environmental structure and internal organization. This perspective complements existing approaches, including natural selection, niche construction, basal cognition, and predictive processing, and provides an integrative framework for understanding the emergence of adaptive complexity and biological diversity.