Evolution

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In the context of OrganicDesign, Evolution refers to the change of behaviour that an entity (system in the Ontology) undergoes over time in response to changes in its environment. Examples of such changes are changes in what's required of it, in supply of it's resources or in demand of its services.

This change is based on maintaining harmony of operation, which in turn requires the ability to assess its performance in terms of its responses to requirements made of it and of its usefulness to the whole network (in the same way as a cell could be assessed in terms of its usefulness to the organism as a whole - see Spontaneous Evolution for more detail on the cellular aspect).

In a holistic society, the usefulness of the individuals in terms of the well-being of the organism as a whole is an important parameter because their energy and resource for growth and even to exist is allocated by organism as a whole. But also in a properly functioning organism the well-being of all cells is assured, because this creates maximum vitality for the organism.

The bottom line

Organisations (and organisms) evolve in response to changes in their environment, such as changes in supply or demand of resources and materials and changes in knowledge, but an important factor determining the nature of change that takes place in an organisation depends on how it assesses the benefit of options available to it in terms of changes to its behaviours that it could choose to accept or reject.

This "measuring stick" that determines what's beneficial and what isn't, and how beneficial or damaging something is, often gets referred to as the bottom line, and is the ultimate determinant of which concepts survive. The most common bottom line we see in our civilisation today is the economic bottom line, which means that most decision-making processes are benefiting the planet only indirectly, if at all. The Organic Design system is instead based on the bottom line of harmony.

See also