Relational Science and the Future of Inquiry

1 Classical Science vs. Relational Science — Paradigms in Contrast

Science as we know it today is rooted in a tradition that dates back centuries — a tradition grounded in classical assumptions about the nature of reality, observation, and causality. This classical scientific paradigm is characterised by several core ideas: that reality exists independently of observation; that phenomena can be isolated and studied as discrete entities; and that knowledge is built through objective measurement and reproducible experiments.

These assumptions have yielded tremendous insights and technologies. Yet, as we push the boundaries of knowledge—into the quantum realm, complex ecosystems, and social systems—it becomes increasingly clear that the classical model is insufficient to capture the full texture of reality. This insufficiency has prompted calls for a new way of thinking: a relational scientific paradigm.

What is Relational Science?

At its heart, relational science acknowledges that reality is not composed of isolated, self-contained things but of dynamic relations and interactions. Objects and subjects co-constitute each other; the observer participates in shaping what is observed; and processes unfold through networks of interdependence. This relational ontology reframes what counts as an explanation: from linear cause-effect chains between discrete entities to webs of mutual influence, emergence, and co-becoming.

Key Contrasts:

Classical Science	Relational Science
Reality is independent, observer is separate	Reality is co-constructed with the observer
Entities have fixed, intrinsic properties	Properties emerge through relations
Causality is linear and local	Causality is distributed, context-dependent
Knowledge is objective and context-free	Knowledge is participatory and situated
Reductionism: isolate parts to understand whole	Holism: understand wholes through relations

Implications for Scientific Methodology

The shift toward relational science challenges the classical ideal of detached measurement. It requires us to reconsider experimental design, data interpretation, and even what counts as evidence. Relational methods emphasise contextualisation, reflexivity, and multi-modal approaches — combining quantitative data with qualitative insights, and integrating perspectives across disciplines.

Why Does It Matter?

Embracing a relational paradigm is not merely an abstract philosophical move. It has practical consequences for how we approach pressing global challenges — from climate change and biodiversity loss to social justice and public health. These complex problems involve entangled systems where linear, reductionist approaches fall short. Relational science offers tools better suited to capturing complexity, fostering cooperation, and co-creating sustainable futures.

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In the next post, we will delve deeper into Observer Participation — exploring how measurement, reality, and co-creation intertwine in relational inquiry.

2 Observer Participation — Measurement, Reality, and Co-Creation

A defining feature of relational science is the recognition that the observer is not a passive spectator but an active participant in the phenomena being studied. This insight disrupts the classical scientific ideal of objective, detached observation and invites a deeper inquiry into the entanglement between measurement, reality, and knowledge.

Observer and Reality: A Mutual Constitution

In classical science, measurement is often assumed to reveal pre-existing properties of independently existing entities. Yet, advances in quantum physics and systems theory challenge this notion. The act of observation itself influences what is observed, collapsing potentials into specific outcomes, and in doing so, co-creating reality with the measured system.

This does not imply that reality is purely subjective or constructed arbitrarily. Rather, it means that reality emerges through ongoing relations between observer and observed, context and system, measurement and meaning.

The Measurement Problem and Its Lessons

Quantum mechanics famously exposes the limits of classical observation. Phenomena such as wavefunction collapse and entanglement highlight that the observer’s choice of measurement affects the behaviour of quantum systems in fundamental ways.

Beyond physics, similar patterns arise in ecology, social sciences, and cultural studies: observations shape and reshape the systems under study, whether through researcher influence, participatory methods, or the feedback loops intrinsic to living systems.

Co-Creation in Scientific Practice

Relational science advocates methodologies that embrace observer participation. Reflexivity — where researchers critically reflect on their own role and influence — becomes essential. Collaborative inquiry, where stakeholders co-design studies and interpret findings together, exemplifies this participatory approach.

Such methods do not undermine scientific rigour; instead, they enrich understanding by making explicit the relational dynamics at play and acknowledging the limits of detached objectivity.

Implications for Knowledge and Inquiry

Observer participation implies that knowledge is situated and provisional. Scientific claims are understood as negotiated, contextual, and contingent — rather than final or universally fixed truths. This relational stance opens space for plural perspectives, interdisciplinarity, and adaptive inquiry responsive to changing conditions.

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In our next post, we will explore Methodologies for Relational Inquiry — examining how scientific practices evolve to embody this participatory, situated approach.

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3 Methodologies for Relational Inquiry — From Experiment to Ethnography

If relational science redefines the observer as a participant in the unfolding of phenomena, then the methods of inquiry themselves must also transform. Traditional scientific methodologies—designed for separation and objectivity—must give way or adapt to approaches that acknowledge and incorporate relational dynamics.

Beyond the Detached Experiment

Classical experimental designs aim to isolate variables, control contexts, and produce replicable, universal findings. While this has driven profound advances, it often abstracts phenomena from their contexts and downplays the mutual shaping of observer and system.

Relational inquiry challenges this by emphasising the situatedness of all observations. Experiments are no longer mere snapshots of independent reality but interventions within dynamic systems. This requires flexible designs that account for feedback, context, and the evolving nature of the phenomena.

Ethnography and Participatory Methods

Ethnographic approaches — long established in anthropology and sociology — offer valuable models for relational inquiry. By immersing themselves in contexts, researchers attend to the interplay of actors, environments, meanings, and practices over time.

Participatory action research and community-based studies extend this by involving those studied as co-researchers, valuing local knowledge and fostering collaborative meaning-making. These methods reveal the entangled nature of knowledge production and highlight the ethical responsibility of inquiry.

Systems Thinking and Network Analysis

Relational methodologies often employ systems thinking, which conceptualises phenomena as networks of interdependent components. Network analysis, complexity science, and modelling techniques allow researchers to map, simulate, and interpret interactions that transcend linear causality.

These tools are particularly potent in ecological, biological, social, and technological domains where relationships themselves carry causal force.

Towards Methodological Pluralism

A relational science does not prescribe a single methodology but encourages pluralism—a toolkit adaptable to the question, context, and participants. Mixed methods approaches, iterative cycles of inquiry, and openness to emergent insights characterise this ethos.

Importantly, relational inquiry foregrounds reflexivity: continual examination of how the researcher’s presence, assumptions, and actions shape the process and outcomes.

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In our next post, we will delve into Relational Thinking in Physics, exploring how quantum entanglement and related phenomena exemplify and inspire relational approaches in science.

4 Relational Thinking in Physics — Quantum Entanglement and Beyond

Physics has long been the poster child of classical science’s quest for objective, universal laws. Yet, the advent of quantum mechanics has profoundly challenged this classical picture, revealing a world that resists simple, detached description and invites relational thinking.

Quantum Entanglement: A Paradigm Shift

At the heart of this challenge lies quantum entanglement—a phenomenon where particles become inseparably linked, such that the state of one instantly correlates with the state of another, regardless of distance. This phenomenon defies classical assumptions of independent, local entities and suggests that relations themselves are fundamental.

Entanglement implies that what exists “out there” is not a collection of isolated objects, but a network of interdependencies, where measurement and observation participate actively in defining reality. In other words, the observer and the observed are entwined.

Relational Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics

Relational interpretations, such as Carlo Rovelli’s Relational Quantum Mechanics, propose that the properties of quantum systems exist only relative to other systems — no absolute, observer-independent state exists. This reframes reality as a web of interactions, where knowledge and existence are co-constructed.

Similarly, interpretations like Quantum Bayesianism (QBism) view the wavefunction as a tool for an agent’s expectations, not an objective property. This underscores the participatory nature of scientific inquiry.

Beyond Quantum Physics

Relational thinking extends beyond quantum physics into the realms of spacetime, information theory, and cosmology. Some approaches suggest that spacetime itself emerges from entanglement patterns, positioning relations as ontologically primary rather than derived.

Implications for Science and Philosophy

These insights challenge entrenched dichotomies — subject/object, observer/observed, and independent/dependent — prompting a reconsideration of what science aims to describe. They invite a shift toward a science that is less about uncovering fixed entities and more about understanding networks of relations and processes.

In the next post, we will explore how relational perspectives illuminate biological and ecological systems, highlighting co-evolution and complex networks.

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5 Relational Biology and Ecology — Systems, Networks, and Co-Evolution

While physics has prompted us to rethink the foundational nature of reality, biology and ecology offer equally profound insights into relationality—revealing life itself as a dynamic network of interactions that shape and are shaped by their contexts.

From Organisms to Systems

Traditional biology often treated organisms as discrete units, bounded entities that evolve through gene-centred processes. Yet, relational biology invites us to view organisms as systems—complex, open, and interdependent networks of cells, genes, and environmental interactions.

This systems perspective acknowledges that the boundaries of organisms are porous and that life unfolds in continuous relation with its surroundings.

Networks and Interactions

Ecology extends this perspective further, focusing on the webs of interaction between organisms and their environments. Food webs, mutualistic relationships, and ecosystem dynamics exemplify how no species or individual evolves in isolation.

The concept of co-evolution captures this beautifully: species adapt not simply to static environments but to other evolving organisms, producing reciprocal influences over time.

Niche Construction and Ecological Inheritance

We have explored how organisms modify their environments and pass these changes to subsequent generations, a process known as niche construction. This challenges gene-centric views by positioning environment modification as a form of inheritance and evolutionary influence.

Relational Development and Phenotypic Plasticity

Developmental biology contributes another layer: phenotypic plasticity—organisms’ capacity to develop different traits in response to environmental cues—highlights how relational interactions during development shape evolutionary outcomes.

This underscores the fluidity and contextuality of life, where genotype, environment, and history are intertwined.

Towards a Relational Biology

Embracing relationality shifts biology from a focus on static ‘things’ to a science of processes and relations. It highlights networks, feedback loops, and histories as foundational to understanding life’s diversity and adaptability.

In the next post, we will examine how the social sciences and humanities are embracing relational approaches, transforming our understanding of culture, meaning, and society.

6 Social Sciences and Humanities — The Relational Turn in Culture and Meaning

The social sciences and humanities have long grappled with the complexity of human experience, culture, and meaning. Recently, a relational turn has reshaped these fields, offering fresh perspectives that resonate with relational ontologies in science.

From Individuals to Networks of Relations

Where classical approaches often centred on individuals as isolated agents or fixed social structures, relational thinking foregrounds the networks, interactions, and processes that constitute social life.

Human identity, culture, and knowledge are understood not as static possessions but as emergent from ongoing interactions—between people, their histories, institutions, and environments.

Language, Meaning, and Semiotics

Relational approaches emphasise language and semiotics as dynamic systems of meaning-making. Meaning is not inherent in isolated words or symbols but arises in relations—between speakers and listeners, texts and contexts, and cultural traditions and innovations.

This dynamic challenges essentialist notions of identity or culture, highlighting hybridity, fluidity, and co-construction.

Power, Agency, and Ethics

A relational lens also reshapes understandings of power and agency. Power is seen not merely as possession but as distributed across networks, enacted in relations.

Agency emerges relationally—through participation, negotiation, and contestation within social fields—inviting ethical reflections on responsibility, participation, and co-creation.

Transdisciplinarity and Methodological Innovation

Social sciences and humanities increasingly adopt transdisciplinary and participatory methods, such as ethnography, dialogic inquiry, and collaborative research.

These methodologies align with relational epistemologies by valuing situated knowledge, multiple perspectives, and the co-production of meaning.

Implications for Culture and Society

Understanding culture and society relationally encourages us to see social change as emergent from complex interactions rather than solely from top-down structures or individual choices.

It opens pathways for more inclusive, responsive, and adaptive approaches to addressing contemporary social challenges.

7 The Future of Science — Toward Integrative, Participatory Inquiry

As we conclude this series, it is clear that adopting a relational ontology invites us to rethink not only what science studies, but how science is done. The future of inquiry points toward more integrative, participatory, and co-creative approaches that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries.

Beyond Reductionism and Fragmentation

Classical science often seeks to break complex phenomena into isolated parts, aiming for precision through reduction. Relational science, by contrast, embraces complexity as fundamental, focusing on patterns of interaction and emergence.

This shift challenges the fragmentation of knowledge and calls for holistic frameworks that honour interconnectedness.

Participatory Epistemologies

Relational inquiry recognises the active participation of observers and practitioners in the production of knowledge. Measurement, observation, and interpretation are not passive acts but co-creative processes that shape what is known.

This participatory stance fosters reflexivity—awareness of how methods, perspectives, and values influence scientific outcomes.

Transdisciplinary Collaboration

Future science increasingly requires collaboration across disciplines, cultures, and sectors. Complex global challenges—such as climate change, health crises, and social inequality—demand integrative approaches that combine insights from physics, biology, social sciences, humanities, and indigenous knowledge.

Relational science provides a conceptual and ethical foundation for such transdisciplinary engagement.

Methodological Innovation

Embracing relationality encourages innovation in methods—blending quantitative and qualitative tools, integrating systems thinking, network analysis, ethnography, and participatory action research.

This methodological pluralism respects multiple ways of knowing and invites diverse stakeholders into inquiry.

Ethics of Inquiry and Co-Creation

A relational future science is deeply ethical. It recognises that scientific knowledge co-produces realities and affects communities and environments. This awareness compels scientists to engage responsibly and collaboratively, fostering science as a shared, dynamic practice embedded in social and ecological contexts.

A Vision for Tomorrow

Ultimately, relational science envisions inquiry as a participatory journey rather than a quest for fixed truths. It calls on us to become co-creators in an ongoing dance with the living world—cultivating curiosity, humility, and openness.

This future is not distant. It is already emerging in pockets of innovation, dialogue, and mutual learning worldwide. The question is: how will we nurture and expand it?

Beyond the Gene: Exploring Multi-Dimensional Inheritance Systems

1 Rethinking Inheritance — Genes Are Only Part of the Story

Inheritance is often equated with genes, those sequences of DNA that carry the blueprint for life. Since the discovery of DNA’s structure in the mid-20th century, genes have been cast as the central actors in heredity and evolution. This gene-centric view shaped decades of research and popular understanding alike, positioning DNA as the sole vehicle of biological information passed from one generation to the next.

Yet, as compelling as the gene-focused model has been, it now faces important challenges. An expanding body of evidence reveals that inheritance is far more complex and multi-dimensional. Organisms inherit not only genetic sequences but also a variety of other factors that influence development and adaptation, including epigenetic modifications, ecological legacies, behavioural patterns, and, in the case of humans and some other species, cultural knowledge. These different modes of inheritance operate simultaneously and interactively, contributing to the continuity and diversity of life in ways that cannot be fully explained by DNA alone.

Why has the gene remained so dominant in heredity studies? Part of the answer lies in its clarity and elegance: genes provide a discrete, molecular unit of inheritance that is relatively easy to identify and manipulate. The discovery of the genetic code and the central dogma of molecular biology (DNA makes RNA makes protein) gave the impression that life’s mysteries could be largely reduced to genetic sequences. This perspective, sometimes called genetic determinism, implied that organisms were essentially the sum of their genes, with the environment playing a secondary or permissive role.

However, this model has been increasingly called into question. A growing number of studies show that factors beyond DNA sequence can be inherited and influence phenotypes — the observable traits and behaviours of organisms. Epigenetic mechanisms, for instance, involve chemical modifications to DNA or associated proteins that regulate gene activity without changing the underlying sequence. These modifications can be influenced by environmental conditions and, crucially, can be transmitted across generations. Similarly, ecological inheritance refers to the transmission of environmental features altered or maintained by organisms themselves, such as nest sites or microbial communities, which then shape the development and survival of descendants.

Behavioural inheritance adds another layer. Many animals learn behaviours from their parents or social groups, passing on survival strategies and social norms independent of genetic code. In humans, cultural inheritance — the transmission of language, tools, customs, and knowledge — represents a powerful force shaping evolution, with feedback effects on biology and society.

Recognising these multiple channels of inheritance demands a broader, relational framework. Inheritance is not a linear transfer of genetic information but a dynamic process involving the interplay of genes, environments, behaviours, and cultures. This relational view better captures how organisms develop and adapt in complex, changing worlds.

In this series, we will examine each of these inheritance systems in detail, exploring their mechanisms, empirical evidence, and evolutionary significance. We will also discuss how this multi-dimensional perspective reshapes longstanding debates in biology and philosophy, opening new pathways for understanding life’s continuity and change.

The gene remains essential, but it is only part of the story. Broadening our view to encompass multi-dimensional inheritance enriches our grasp of biology and invites us to rethink what it means to inherit, to evolve, and ultimately to be alive.

2 Epigenetic Inheritance — Regulating Genes Beyond the Sequence

If genes are the text, epigenetics is the punctuation — subtle, powerful, and capable of altering the message without changing the words themselves. The term epigenetics refers to the molecular mechanisms that regulate gene expression without altering the underlying DNA sequence. These mechanisms help determine when, where, and how strongly genes are turned on or off. Crucially, some of these modifications can be transmitted across generations, providing a mode of inheritance that works independently of changes in gene sequence.

The most well-known epigenetic mechanisms include:

• DNA methylation, the addition of methyl groups to specific sites on DNA, which typically reduces gene expression;

• Histone modification, the chemical tagging of proteins around which DNA is wrapped, altering how accessible genes are to transcription machinery;

• Non-coding RNAs, which can modulate gene expression by interacting with mRNA or chromatin.

These mechanisms form a flexible system of regulation — one that is responsive to internal development and external environment alike.

Transgenerational inheritance of epigenetic modifications has now been observed in a wide range of species, from plants and insects to mammals. In some cases, environmental stresses — such as temperature changes, toxins, or nutrient availability — can trigger epigenetic changes that persist for several generations. This has been particularly well documented in plants, whose development is tightly coupled to environmental variability. For example, as discussed in our recent series on rice, exposure to cold conditions over multiple generations led to inheritable changes in DNA methylation that conferred cold tolerance, without altering the DNA sequence.

In mammals, the evidence is more complex and sometimes contested, given the extensive epigenetic “reprogramming” that occurs during the formation of gametes and early embryonic development. Nevertheless, studies have found that certain environmental exposures — including stress, diet, and toxic chemicals — can leave epigenetic marks that persist across one or more generations. For example, rodent studies have shown that offspring of parents exposed to specific diets or stressors can exhibit changes in metabolism, behaviour, and disease susceptibility — even when the DNA sequence remains unchanged.

Such findings challenge the long-held assumption that inheritance is purely genetic. They show that environmental experiences can be biologically embedded and transmitted — not by altering the gene, but by regulating its expression. This raises difficult questions about how to define heritability and where to draw the boundary between organism and environment in evolutionary explanation.

Epigenetic inheritance also disrupts the traditional view of the environment as an external backdrop against which genes unfold. Instead, it suggests a more dynamic relationship: the environment becomes an active participant in shaping the heritable regulation of gene activity. This is not a rejection of natural selection, but it does extend the range of mechanisms through which variation arises and persists.

Moreover, epigenetics reintroduces a sense of biological plasticity — the capacity for organisms to modulate their development and physiology in response to conditions they encounter. And when these responses become heritable, they offer a pathway for non-genetic adaptation, especially in timescales shorter than those typically required for mutational change.

Yet it’s important to avoid swinging too far in the opposite direction. Not all environmentally induced epigenetic changes are stable across generations, and many are reset or erased. The mechanisms that determine which changes persist and which do not are not yet fully understood. But the existence of stable epigenetic inheritance, even in a subset of cases, calls for an expanded theory of heredity — one that includes regulation, responsiveness, and relationality as core principles.

In the next post, we will explore a different but complementary mode of inheritance: ecological inheritance — the legacy of modified environments, habitats, and niches passed from one generation to the next.

3 Ecological Inheritance — Passing On Modified Worlds

Organisms do not inherit only genes, or even just regulatory systems like those involved in epigenetic inheritance. They also inherit worlds. From beavers who pass on dammed rivers to their offspring, to humans who inherit cities, languages, and institutions, organisms routinely inherit environments that have been altered by the activities of previous generations. This process — known as ecological inheritance — is a key component of what some evolutionary biologists call niche construction theory.

Niche construction refers to the ways in which organisms actively modify their environments in ways that feed back into their own development and evolution. These modifications — from burrows, webs, and nests, to chemical gradients, fire regimes, and landscapes — can persist beyond the lifetime of the organism, shaping the selective pressures and developmental pathways faced by their descendants.

In ecological inheritance, the effects of past modifications are not merely incidental. They constitute a transmitted legacy — a transformed context of development, in which the activities of ancestors continue to exert influence. Crucially, this inheritance is not genetic: it operates through persistence in the environment and the patterned behaviours that reproduce it. Yet it has evolutionary consequences just as real.

For instance, earthworms modify soil structure, nutrient availability, and microbial communities. These environmental changes persist and influence the development, survival, and reproduction of subsequent generations. Likewise, the mounds built by termites alter airflow, temperature, and humidity, providing a regulated microclimate for the colony's descendants.

In humans, ecological inheritance becomes even more pronounced. Our cultural practices — agriculture, urbanisation, architecture — leave behind materially altered environments that shape developmental trajectories over time. A child raised in a literate, urban society does not inherit only a genome and a set of epigenetic regulations; they also inherit a built environment, a material infrastructure, and a set of social expectations that profoundly influence what kinds of beings they can become.

Ecological inheritance brings attention to the role of organism–environment feedback loops in evolution. Rather than treating the environment as a static backdrop, this perspective sees it as a dynamic and partly organism-constructed field of interaction. Organisms do not just adapt to their environments; they also adapt their environments to themselves — and pass on these changes.

This mode of inheritance also challenges the assumption that evolutionary causality flows in a single direction: from genes to traits, and from traits to fitness. Instead, ecological inheritance suggests that causality is distributed across time and space, entangled in a web of activities, modifications, and reciprocities.

It also blurs the line between inheritance and development. What counts as “inherited” in this framework is not always transmitted via gametes, nor even via the body of the parent. It includes legacies embedded in places, patterns, and practices — in what the philosopher of biology Richard Lewontin once called “the organism–environment dialectic.”

In the next post, we will continue our exploration by turning to behavioural inheritance — another pathway through which living systems transmit adaptive strategies across generations.

4 Behavioural Inheritance — Repertoires of Doing

Living beings do not begin their lives from a blank slate. In addition to inheriting genes, epigenetic configurations, and ecologically modified worlds, many organisms also inherit patterned behaviours — ways of doing, responding, and interacting that shape their development from the start. This is known as behavioural inheritance, and it is especially prominent in animals with extended parental care or social learning.

Behavioural inheritance involves the transmission of actions, skills, and routines across generations. These are not simply instinctual, hard-wired reflexes coded by genes; rather, they are often acquired through interaction, observation, imitation, and participation. They include foraging strategies, vocalisations, predator avoidance, mating rituals, tool use, migratory routes, and much more. In this sense, behaviour is not just an outcome of inheritance — it is also a medium of inheritance.

Consider the song dialects of birds. Young songbirds raised in isolation from adult models will fail to develop species-typical songs. But when exposed to singing adults during critical learning periods, they acquire specific regional variations — dialects — that are transmitted culturally rather than genetically. These learned songs are essential to mate attraction and reproductive success, shaping fitness outcomes across generations.

Or consider migratory knowledge in animals such as cranes, elephants, and whales. These long-distance movements often depend on behavioural traditions passed down from elders — knowledge of timing, routes, and destinations that cannot be derived from genetic instructions alone. When such knowledge is lost (as in disrupted or fragmented populations), migratory behaviours can fail to re-establish, even when habitats are restored.

In humans, behavioural inheritance is foundational. From gestures and habits to speech patterns and moral norms, children inherit a rich repertoire of practices long before they understand them as such. This inheritance is largely tacit and embodied. It takes place through immersion in a social world: watching, mimicking, playing, being corrected, being praised. It is how a child learns to walk, to greet, to take turns, to speak — how they come to inhabit a particular form of life.

Behavioural inheritance also works in tandem with ecological and symbolic systems. A ritual, for example, is both a repeated behaviour and an enactment within a culturally shaped space. A cooking technique is at once a practical skill and a way of reproducing taste, memory, and identity. Through behaviour, organisms not only adapt to environments but reproduce the very conditions of their meaningfulness.

Crucially, behavioural inheritance is not limited to conscious teaching. It can be implicit and unintentional — a matter of what is modelled, made available, or expected. It is also subject to variation and innovation, especially in species capable of learning. Thus, behavioural traditions can drift, diversify, or be recombined, contributing to evolutionary change not just as background noise, but as active variation in the developmental landscape.

The implications are significant. Behavioural inheritance demonstrates that evolution does not operate only through genetic variation filtered by selection. It includes the passing on of ways of doing, knowing, and relating that shape organisms from their earliest encounters with the world. This adds another layer of relationality to the evolutionary process: not only are organisms co-constituted with their environments, they are also co-constituted with the actions and interactions of others — across time.

In the next post, we will turn to symbolic inheritance, a uniquely human system that extends behavioural inheritance into the realm of shared meaning — and into new evolutionary dynamics.

5 Symbolic Inheritance — The Transmission of Meaning

Among all forms of inheritance, symbolic inheritance stands out as uniquely human. It encompasses the transmission of meanings, classifications, categories, and codes — the semiotic scaffolding through which we interpret and participate in the world. From language to law, kinship to cosmology, humans inherit symbolic systems that profoundly shape their capacities, identities, and actions.

Whereas behavioural inheritance involves repertoires of doing, symbolic inheritance involves repertoires of meaning. These meanings are not confined to individual experience but are distributed across time and community. They are instantiated in speech and writing, ritual and myth, architecture and art. They shape how we make sense of experience, how we structure our societies, and how we imagine what is possible.

Language is the paradigmatic case. A child born into a linguistic community inherits not only the capacity for language (a biological potential), but also a specific language — a historically evolved system of meaning-making. This system comes with grammatical categories, distinctions, metaphors, and norms of interaction. Through it, the child learns not just to label objects, but to construe relationships, to project identity, to negotiate obligations, and to participate in shared worlds.

Symbolic inheritance operates through what we might call semiotic niches — socially and materially supported systems of signification. These niches include not only language, but also legal codes, religious symbols, measurement systems, digital protocols, and scientific taxonomies. They organise social life, regulate behaviour, and orient perception. They are not innate, but must be learned, interpreted, and enacted — often in ways so routine they feel natural.

Importantly, symbolic systems are not merely transmitted intact. They are dynamically re-instantiated by their users. Each utterance, performance, or interpretation both reproduces and slightly modifies the system. This means that symbolic inheritance is not static, but evolutionary — shaped by cumulative history, social negotiation, and shifting contexts. It is also generative, enabling new configurations of meaning, identity, and value.

From the perspective of relational ontology, symbolic inheritance exemplifies the idea that to know is to participate. One does not acquire knowledge as an object; one enters into a community of practice, a shared history of sense-making. The meanings one inherits are not private contents in the mind but public affordances for interaction — ways of engaging with others, with the world, and with oneself.

This has profound implications for how we understand evolution, development, and culture. In symbolic inheritance, the evolutionary process extends far beyond genes and behaviours. It includes the historical sedimentation and transformation of meanings — of how beings come to matter, to themselves and each other. It is here that human development most clearly transcends individual biology: to become human is not just to develop a body and brain, but to inherit a way of making the world intelligible.

In the final post, we will draw these threads together — genetic, epigenetic, ecological, behavioural, and symbolic — into a unified relational picture of inheritance, and explore what it means to think evolution beyond the gene.

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6 Inheritance as Participation — A Relational Synthesis

Across the preceding posts, we’ve traced a widening arc of inheritance: from the molecular transmission of DNA to the transmission of meanings in symbolic form. Each step has expanded our understanding of what it means to inherit — and what it means to evolve. In this concluding post, we bring these threads together under a relational ontology of inheritance, in which to inherit is not merely to receive, but to participate.

The classical gene-centric model of inheritance treats inheritance as a linear flow of information from genes to traits to fitness. Within this framework, causality is largely unidirectional, and the environment functions as a backdrop to genetic action. But as we have seen, inheritance is not confined to genes. It operates at multiple levels — epigenetic, ecological, behavioural, and symbolic — and through multiple media — chemical, structural, social, and semiotic.

A relational perspective reframes inheritance not as the transmission of static units, but as the ongoing entanglement of beings and their contexts. To inherit, in this view, is to enter into a history of activity: to take up a position in a world already shaped by others, and to participate in its further shaping. Each inheritance is a joining-in — a co-constitution of self and world through processes of mutual becoming.

This means that inheritance is not only biological but developmental, ecological, and cultural. It is not just what an organism has, but what it does — and what it becomes-with. An inherited gene, for instance, has no meaning or effect apart from the networks of regulation, interaction, and environment in which it is embedded. Likewise, inherited behaviours, environments, and meanings derive their force from participation in ongoing patterns of activity.

Importantly, this relational view does not deny the role of genes — but it decentres them. It treats genes not as master codes but as one element in a distributed system of inheritance, in which many forms of historical influence co-exist and co-act. This shift mirrors broader moves in biology and philosophy that emphasise systems, processes, and interactions over discrete, isolatable causes.

It also highlights the role of meaning in evolution. As symbolic inheritors, humans do not merely pass on traits or strategies; we pass on ways of making sense of ourselves and our world. These ways are not fixed, but responsive, capable of transformation in light of new experiences and commitments. In this sense, symbolic inheritance is not the end point of evolution, but its deepening — a turn toward the reflexive, the ethical, and the possible.

A relational ontology of inheritance offers a vision of life not as the competition of gene-bearing individuals, but as a tapestry of intergenerational commitments, reciprocities, and co-creations. It encourages us to see ourselves not as autonomous actors, but as participants in histories that precede us and futures that depend on us. Inheriting, then, is not just something we undergo — it is something we do.

To inherit, in this view, is not to carry a past but to carry it forward — to live it, rework it, and offer it again. It is to participate in the world as a process of transmission and transformation. And in doing so, to recognise that evolution is not only what brought us here, but what we do together, now.

Relational Evolution

1 Cold Rice, Hot Topic — Rethinking Evolution from the Margins

In May 2025, Nature reported on a study that many hailed as a “landmark” in evolutionary biology. Conducted over more than a decade, the research showed that rice plants exposed to cold conditions for several generations acquired a stable tolerance to freezing temperatures — without any detectable changes to their DNA sequence. The adaptive trait was passed on through changes in epigenetic markers: molecular tags that regulate how genes are expressed, without altering the genetic code itself.

The rice plants had, in effect, inherited a new capacity not by mutating, but by modulating the expression of what was already possible. What made headlines, however, was not just the discovery itself, but how it was framed. “The study adds to evidence challenging the dominance of ‘natural selection’ as the sole adaptive force in evolution,” Nature reported. To some, this seemed to suggest a quiet revolution: evolution without mutation, inheritance without genes, adaptation without Darwin.

But what, exactly, is being challenged here — and what is being misunderstood?

As with many scientific breakthroughs, this study’s significance lies not only in its results but in what it invites us to reconsider. Yet to ask what this discovery means is to enter a space where biology and philosophy converge. What kind of thing is an adaptation? Where does variation come from? Can evolution be understood not only as a process of random mutations filtered by environmental selection, but as something more relational — something in which organism and environment co-participate in the actualisation of traits?

This series takes the rice study as a departure point for rethinking some of our inherited assumptions about evolution. It does not seek to discard natural selection, but to contextualise it. Nor does it argue that epigenetics overturns Darwinian evolution, as some popular accounts might imply. Instead, we ask: what happens when we stop treating genes as the sole site of evolutionary change, and begin to see adaptation as an unfolding within relationships — between organism and environment, past and future, potential and instance?

The cold-tolerant rice study is striking, not because it contradicts evolutionary theory, but because it exposes the limitations of a still-dominant narrative in which adaptation is framed as the gradual selection of random genetic variants. That narrative, often identified with the “Modern Synthesis” of mid-20th century biology, has long struggled to accommodate the plasticity, responsiveness, and situatedness that living systems exhibit. Evolution, we’re learning, is not only about what survives — but about what emerges, and how.

In the posts to follow, we’ll explore how epigenetics reshapes our understanding of variation, inheritance, and selection. We’ll look at how evolutionary biology is already moving beyond the gene-centric paradigm, and how a relational ontology might help make sense of this transition. Most of all, we’ll try to ask what it means to think with evolution — not as spectators watching traits compete for survival, but as participants in the very processes that shape the unfolding of life.

If rice can learn to grow cold within a few seasons, perhaps it is time we warmed to a more dynamic, relational view of evolution.

2 What Is Epigenetic Inheritance — and What Is It Not?

If evolution is typically understood as the selection of genetic variation, then epigenetics has arrived as something of a conceptual disruptor. In recent years, it has become a buzzword not only in biology but in popular science, psychology, and even wellness culture. Amid this proliferation of meanings, it’s worth pausing to ask: what do we actually mean by epigenetic inheritance? And just as importantly: what don’t we mean?

The rice study that sparked this series showed that cold tolerance could be passed from one generation to the next without changes to the DNA sequence. Instead, what changed were epigenetic markers — molecular tags (such as methyl groups) that affect whether specific genes are expressed or silenced. Crucially, these tags were heritable: they persisted across generations even when the original environmental trigger (cold stress) was removed.

This kind of inheritance challenges the narrowest reading of the “central dogma” of molecular biology, which once held that information flows one way: from DNA to RNA to protein. It also complicates the standard evolutionary account in which new traits arise through random mutations that, if beneficial, are retained through natural selection.

But epigenetic inheritance is not magic, nor is it a wholesale rejection of evolutionary theory. Rather, it invites us to broaden our framework. The question is not whether genetic change matters — clearly, it does — but whether all meaningful biological variation must be genetic in origin.

Epigenetics opens a space for adaptive plasticity: the ability of organisms to modulate their gene expression in response to environmental cues, in ways that can be passed on to offspring. It reintroduces the environment not just as a selective filter acting on random variation, but as a participant in the actualisation of variation itself.

Yet here is where we must tread carefully. To say that epigenetic changes are inherited is not to say that the environment can programme an organism’s traits at will. Nor does it mean that we have discovered a neo-Lamarckian mechanism in which acquired characteristics are routinely passed on. Most epigenetic marks are not stably inherited; many are reset during gamete formation or early development. What makes the rice study exceptional is precisely the durability of the observed changes.

We should also resist the temptation to think of epigenetics as somehow more “intentional” than mutation — as if the environment were purposefully sculpting traits in response to need. Evolution remains an emergent process, not a directed one. What epigenetics shows us is not that organisms consciously adapt, but that the boundary between organism and environment is more porous, and more responsive, than a strictly gene-centred model allows.

In this light, epigenetics may be less a repudiation of Darwinian evolution than a refinement — a gesture toward a more relational account of variation and inheritance. It suggests that evolutionary novelty can arise not only through randomness filtered by selection, but through context-sensitive modulation of existing potential.

Where genetic inheritance assumes a largely stable archive of possibility, epigenetic inheritance shows us how that archive can be dynamically interpreted. It is not the script that changes, but the reading of it.

In the next post, we’ll explore this idea further by asking: What counts as variation? And how might our assumptions about randomness, causality, and novelty be shaped by the models we use?

For now, the takeaway is this: epigenetics doesn’t replace the genetic model — but it helps us reframe the story of evolution as a more entangled, co-emergent process. One in which life does not simply adapt to its conditions, but evolves with them.

3 What Counts as Variation? Rethinking Evolution’s Raw Material

In classical evolutionary theory, variation is the fuel of change. Mutations — random changes in DNA — introduce novel traits, and natural selection acts on these traits to shape populations over time. From this perspective, variation is a kind of background noise: unpredictable, unstructured, and external to the processes that filter it.

But what if variation is not just random input, but relational output? What if what counts as “variation” depends not simply on chance, but on the ongoing interaction between organism and environment — and on the frameworks through which we interpret that interaction?

Let’s return to the rice study. The researchers didn’t observe a new gene, a mutation, or even a hybrid genotype. Instead, they observed a change in gene expression patterns — a difference not in what was present, but in how it was activated. This shift produced a functional difference (cold tolerance), and that difference persisted across generations.

So is this “variation”? If we define variation as differences in DNA sequence, then no. But if we define it more broadly — as the emergence of new traits with potential adaptive consequences — then yes. And crucially, this broader view allows us to see variation as something that can be induced, not just stumbled upon.

This challenges the idea that variation must be random to be evolutionary. The randomness of mutation has long served as a conceptual buffer between evolution and teleology: if change is random, then it cannot be purposeful. But randomness is not the same as independence. A dice roll is random, but it presupposes a system of rules, constraints, and possible outcomes. Likewise, epigenetically induced variation is not directed, but it is structured — shaped by the relational dynamics between organism and environment.

From a relational perspective, then, variation is not a static property of an isolated genome. It is an emergent property of interaction — of the organism’s openness to contextual influence, and the environment’s capacity to actualise different potentials. This is not to say that all variation is environmentally induced, but that even so-called “random” variation is only meaningful in relation to a system that constrains and interprets it.

This insight matters because it reframes how we understand novelty in evolution. In a strictly gene-centric model, novelty is additive: new traits arise when genetic accidents build up over time. But in a relational model, novelty can also be combinatorial and contextual — arising from new patterns of activation, new environmental triggers, or new configurations of interaction.

In this view, the question “what counts as variation?” is no longer a simple matter of molecular bookkeeping. It is a matter of framework — of how we define change, where we locate agency, and what kinds of difference we are prepared to recognise.

The rice didn’t gain a new gene. But it did gain a new capacity — one that emerged through its history of interaction with a particular stress, and that became inheritable through epigenetic marking. That change is as real, and as evolutionarily relevant, as any nucleotide substitution.

In the next post, we’ll explore how this redefinition of variation affects our understanding of inheritance. If traits can be passed on without changes to DNA, what does it mean to say that something is “inherited”? And how stable must a trait be to count?

4 What Counts as Inheritance? Expanding the Evolutionary Ledger

Inheritance has traditionally meant one thing in evolutionary theory: the transmission of genetic information from parent to offspring. Encoded in DNA, this information is thought to specify the organism’s developmental programme, which unfolds (with some environmental modulation) to produce traits. The rest — epigenetics, physiology, behaviour, culture — is considered either background noise or downstream consequence.

But the rice study demands a reconsideration. Here we find cold tolerance passed from one generation to the next, not through mutation or recombination, but through changes to chemical tags on the genome. These changes alter gene expression and persist for multiple generations. The underlying DNA remains constant. And yet, something clearly has been inherited.

This phenomenon is not new. In recent decades, biologists have documented epigenetic inheritance in plants, animals, and even humans. What makes the rice study striking is the clarity of the mechanism and the functional benefit — a heritable trait, induced by environmental stress, that increases fitness and spreads. In other words: this is inheritance, in any evolutionary sense that matters.

So what counts as inheritance?

One answer is purely molecular: only DNA sequence counts, because only sequence is stable, replicable, and “digital.” But this answer is increasingly unsatisfactory. Stability is a matter of degree, not kind. Epigenetic marks can persist across generations. So can maternal effects, microbiomes, learned behaviours, and environmental legacies. If the test of inheritance is whether a trait recurs in offspring and influences evolutionary dynamics, then DNA is not the only medium.

This is the view taken by the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES), which argues for a broader conception of inheritance — one that includes epigenetic, ecological, behavioural, and symbolic systems. From this perspective, inheritance is not just about molecules, but about informational continuity — any process by which prior states constrain or enable future possibilities.

The relational turn takes this one step further: it views inheritance not just as a transmission of pre-formed content, but as a reinstantiation of relational patterns. What is inherited is not a static message, but a set of structured affordances — potentials that can be reactivated, reconfigured, and redeployed in novel contexts.

In this view, the rice plants didn’t pass on a fixed trait. They passed on a conditioned responsiveness, a readiness to activate certain patterns under certain stresses. This responsiveness was made material through epigenetic tags, but its significance lies in the relational history that gave rise to those tags — the plant’s encounter with cold, its selective memory of that encounter, and its conveyance of that memory to the next generation.

This is not Lamarckism in its caricatured form — the idea that any acquired trait can be inherited. Nor is it a rejection of genetic inheritance. Rather, it is a reframing of inheritance as multimodal: a system of layered constraints, some genetic, some epigenetic, some ecological or behavioural, all interacting to shape what becomes possible.

What matters, then, is not whether a trait is written in DNA, but whether it participates in the organism–environment dynamic that makes evolution happen. Inheritance, in this light, is not a chain of discrete handovers. It is a pattern of continuity-in-difference — a means by which the past remains active in the unfolding of the present.

Next, we’ll turn to the heart of the evolutionary process: selection. If variation can be induced, and inheritance is relational, then what exactly is being selected — and by whom?

5 What Counts as Selection? Induction, Participation, and the Environment as Co-Agent

Selection is often framed as the ultimate editor of evolution. Random mutations provide variation; natural selection winnows the results, favouring traits that confer reproductive advantage. On this view, selection is reactive — it operates after the fact, passively eliminating the unfit and letting the fittest survive.

But the rice study complicates this picture. The cold environment doesn’t simply reward plants that happen to survive the stress. It induces heritable change. It participates in shaping the very variation that it will later reward. In this scenario, selection is not an impartial filter. It is an active partner in the generation of traits.

This is not a new idea. Developmental systems theorists and advocates of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis have long argued that selection is only part of the story — that variation is not always random, and that organisms and environments co-construct one another over time. But what the rice study shows is that this mutual shaping can occur over just a few generations, and that the environment can induce heritable change without altering DNA sequence.

So what counts as selection?

Classically, selection operates on phenotypic variation — differences in traits — and promotes those variants that confer greater reproductive success. But this model presumes a separation: variation is random, selection is external, inheritance is genetic. The rice study dissolves these separations. Variation is not random, but induced. The environment is not external, but entwined. Inheritance is not purely genetic, but epigenetic and relational.

From a relational perspective, selection is not a matter of external pressures acting on isolated traits. It is the co-emergence of trait and context — the mutual attunement of organism and environment over time. Traits are not simply selected; they are made selectable by the histories of interaction that render them meaningful, useful, or viable.

In the rice case, selection is not the cold simply “choosing” those plants that happen to survive. It is the cold interacting with a responsive system — a system capable of reconfiguring itself under stress, of “remembering” that configuration, and of passing it on. This is not natural selection as a sieve. It is selection as a dialogue — a history of adjustments, reciprocal constraints, and shared shaping.

This also suggests a broader account of agency. The environment is not a static backdrop against which evolution plays out. It is an active participant, a co-agent in the evolutionary process. To say that cold “selects” for tolerance is not to anthropomorphise the cold, but to recognise that selection is not one-sided. It emerges from relational entanglement — from the way living systems and their environments co-constitute each other across time.

If variation can be induced, and selection is relational, then evolution is not a one-way process of adaptation to fixed external pressures. It is a process of becoming-with — of reciprocal transformation between organism and world.

In the next post, we will return to the heart of evolutionary theory: the concept of adaptation. What does it mean to adapt in a world where variation is induced, inheritance is multimodal, and selection is mutual?

6 What Counts as Adaptation? The Grammar of Fit in a Co-Created World

Adaptation is the crown jewel of evolutionary explanation. It accounts for the appearance of design without a designer, and for the apparent harmony between organism and environment. Organisms seem fit for their worlds — as if sculpted by the very forces they endure.

But what do we mean by “fit”? In classical Darwinian terms, fitness is about differential reproductive success. Traits that enhance survival and reproduction are selected over time. An adaptation, then, is a trait shaped by this process — a product of natural selection operating on inherited variation.

Yet as we’ve seen, the rice study — and the growing body of work on epigenetics, developmental plasticity, and niche construction — challenges the separability of variation, inheritance, and selection. It invites us to rethink the very notion of adaptation.

Let us pause on the grammar of the word. To “adapt” is to be adapted to, but also to adapt oneself. The first is passive; the second is active. One is done by an external force; the other is done with or through the organism’s own capacities. The rice plants do not merely receive cold tolerance as a selective gift. They actively respond, reorganise, retain, and transmit that capacity — all in relation to the environmental provocation.

This reframes adaptation as not merely a matter of fit, but of fitting-with — a dynamic attunement between organism and world. It is not just that a trait fits an environment; it is that trait and environment are co-shaped in the unfolding of evolutionary time.

The rice plants’ cold tolerance is not simply a pre-existing variant selected from a pool. It is a relational achievement — one that involves perception, response, memory, and reproduction. The trait did not exist before the stress; it emerged with it. In this sense, the adaptation is not a static outcome but a process — an unfolding of potential across instances of interaction.

This view draws attention to the semiotic dimensions of adaptation. Adaptations are not just mechanically useful; they are meaningful within the ecology of interactions in which they arise. The chemical tags that modify the ACT1 gene are not mere switches; they are signals, cues, signs in a system that interprets and responds. The organism is not a passive substrate. It is a participant in the construction of its own capacities to be affected and to affect.

From this perspective, we might say that adaptation is not simply the preservation of form under pressure, but the emergence of form through relation. It is the crystallisation of shared history — of the ways in which organisms and environments have come to matter to one another.

This also has implications for how we understand maladaptation, constraint, and change. If adaptation is not a static match but a living process, then so too is the breakdown of adaptation — not a failure of design, but a shift in relational resonance. What once fit may no longer fit, not because the trait is faulty, but because the context has transformed — or the relationship has frayed.

The rice study teaches us that adaptation is not just an outcome of selection; it is a mode of participation. The plants do not simply endure the cold; they learn with it, remember it, and pass that learning on.

In our final post, we will reflect on what this means for the theory of evolution itself. If variation is induced, inheritance is multimodal, selection is mutual, and adaptation is relational — what kind of theory do we need to account for life as a co-creative process?

7 What Counts as a Theory of Evolution? Towards a Relational Understanding of Life’s Becoming

Evolutionary theory has long been one of the cornerstones of biology, a grand narrative explaining how life diversifies, adapts, and thrives. For much of the twentieth century, the Modern Synthesis—blending Darwin’s natural selection with Mendelian genetics—held sway. It presented evolution as a process driven by random genetic mutations filtered by natural selection, with inheritance confined to DNA sequences.

But the rice study on epigenetic cold tolerance, alongside decades of research into plasticity, developmental systems, and ecological feedback, challenges the simplicity of this framework. It demands a deeper, more relational account of evolution—one that honours the complexity and entanglement of life and environment.

If variation can be induced by the environment, if inheritance operates across multiple channels beyond DNA, if selection is mutual rather than unilateral, and if adaptation is a process of participation rather than mere fit, then our theory of evolution must expand accordingly.

What would such a theory look like?

1. Multi-dimensional Inheritance:
   Inheritance is not limited to DNA sequences. It encompasses epigenetic marks, cellular structures, ecological legacies, cultural knowledge, and behavioural traditions. Each of these forms of inheritance participates in the ongoing construction of organism and environment alike.

2. Induced Variation and Developmental Plasticity:
   Variation is not solely random mutation. Organisms can respond plastically to environmental inputs, producing novel phenotypes that may be stable across generations. Developmental systems shape these responses, enabling organisms to actively participate in their own evolution.

3. Relational Selection:
   Selection is not simply an external filter but a co-creative process. Organisms and environments shape each other reciprocally over time, making traits selectable through their mutual history and context.

4. Adaptation as Process:
   Adaptation is not a static state of “fit” but an ongoing, dynamic process of attunement, interpretation, and transformation. It involves semiotic systems—signalling, memory, and meaning—that mediate organism–environment relations.

5. Evolution as Becoming-With:
   Life does not evolve as isolated entities competing in a fixed arena. It evolves through entangled histories, through becoming-with others—organisms, environments, ecologies, cultures.

This relational view does not reject the power of natural selection or genetics; rather, it situates them within a richer conceptual landscape. It invites us to see evolution not just as change over time but as the unfolding of relational patterns, the weaving of co-constitutive threads that create the fabric of life.

The rice study stands as a landmark, not because it overturns classical theory in one stroke, but because it reveals the multifaceted choreography of evolutionary processes — a dance of genes, molecules, environments, and histories.

Why does this matter?

Embracing relational evolution deepens our understanding of biology and enriches other fields—from ecology to medicine, from philosophy to anthropology. It compels us to rethink agency, causality, and the nature of living systems. It reminds us that life is not a collection of static parts but a dynamic, responsive, and co-creative process.

As we move forward, this perspective opens new avenues for research and reflection—inviting us to ask not only how life evolves, but how we, as part of the living world, evolve with it.