Selection

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        <i>Selection</i>
      
      
         
      
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        Although the result of selection, whether through evolution or ontogeny, is structural 
        coupling (because what is selected is always a structure), selection takes place through 
        the operational confrontations of a composite system in the medium in which it interacts 
        as a simple unity through the properties of its components. Thus, it is the differential 
        effectiveness of the actual operation of different structures of different organisms of 
        the same kind in parallel existence, or of the same organism in different instances of its 
        individual history, that constitutes the process of selection in living systems. 
        Accordingly, selection always takes place in a domain orthogonal to (different from) the 
        domain of existence of that which is selected. It is this feature of the process of 
        selection that enables an observer to claim that selection takes place through the 
        functional value of the structures selected, giving with this judgment, a posteriori, the 
        misleading impression that what takes place in selection is a semantic coupling that 
        allows for an infinity of structural realizations. In other words, although the 
        metaphorical description in functional (semantic) terms is useful for referring to the 
        orthogonal relation between the domains in which the selective interactions take place and 
        in which the selected structures exist, the result is structural coupling, because the 
        operational effectiveness of the selected system depends exclusively on the unique 
        correspondence thus obtained between its structure and the structure of its medium. 
        Furthermore, it is also this feature of the process of selection that allows for the 
        diversity of sequential or simultaneous structural couplings that may take place during 
        evolutionary or ontogenic adaptation. if the organization of a system is homeostatically 
        maintained invariant, as occurs in autopoietic systems, adaptation is the homeostatic 
        clamping through behavior (the actual operation of the autopoietic system in its medium) 
        of the structural coupling of a system (ontogeny) or of a succession of systems 
        (evolution) to their static or changing medium
      
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