The neo-Darwinian perspective, which still dominates the popular understanding of biology, isolates individual organisms or genes from the context of the living matrix that sustains them. Scarcity, competition and individual success are seen as the main drivers of evolution. This is an outdated perspective, based on outdated metaphors like Richard

basic ingredients for systems that could devise and improvise solutions to living that are emergent, versatile, adaptive, and robust. The new picture dispels the long-standing idea that living systems must be regarded as machines.