WARNING: original thought, not backed by research or domain knowledge. I’m not a biologist.

The current model of evolution: random mutation + selection. I call this brute force evolution.

The speed of change of species seems just too high for purely random evolution. And species seem to be very stable when external conditions don’t change much. In other words, a constant rate of mutation starkly contrasts with the discontinuous rates of change/stability of species.

From an evolutionary perspective, to throw away most of the information gained by the individuals over their lifetimes is silly.

What if random evolution, early on (perhaps just before the great radiation 800m years ago) discovered a way to better preserve information and encode changes into the genotype?

For the scientific minded, there’s no need to be afraid of theism or teleology: non-brute force evolution can be scientific: observable & replicable.

Perhaps there are insights to be gained by Christopher Alexander’s study of the unfolding of living structure. Perhaps living structure doesn’t use brute force, because it is guided by transformations that increase wholeness at every step. Information would then not be lost, but rather built upon through unfolding.