FROM METABIOLOGY TO METAEVOLUTION: A NEW PERSPECTIVE IN (LIFE) SCIENCES

Metaevolution is the evolution of the potentiality of evolution. This is somehow related to “Creativity” by Chaitin, “Self-production” or autopoiesis by Maturana &Varela, “Self-organization”, to homeorhetic processes, to emergence passages and to the enlarging of the space of status of evolutionary changes. Metaevolutionary “jumps” in wetware are eukaryotic cell, aerobic metabolism, multi-cellular organization, NS. Metaevolution can be integrated with exaptation. Crossing over, alternative splicing, epigenetic modifications, transposons and retrotransposons represent the engine of the evolutionary process since they make possible the rearrangement of the metabolic processes and of the anatomo-physiological characteristics depending on the conditions of the external ambient. Metaevolution continues in cognitive-cultural sphere: cognitive transfert represents “noetic exaptation” and metaevolutionary jump. In both cases of Metabiology and of Metaevolution the prefix “Meta-” is useful to distinguish different epistemological levels, even if in a different meaning. A new horizon in Biology: no more dogmas, only the equation: “bio is evo & evo is bio” (see Dobzhansky), as it is meant also in Evo-Devo Biology.