Plastic Ontogenesis: Memory, Closure, and Habitual Teleology in Development

The aim of this chapter is to shed some light on the fascinating interplay between agency and memory in biological systems and to explore how these concepts can inform our understanding of organismal evolution. Memory phenomena can be observed on various levels of organismal organisation and evolution, from epigenetic marking on chromatin all the way to developmental regulatory networks. If we view such things as memory instead of mere heredity, we might be able to better explain the purposeful behaviour and biological teleology of the living, whereby any such explanation is necessarily linked to the concept of organismal closure.