Evolutionary tinkering

Evolutionary tinkering is an explanation of how evolution happens in nature. It explains that evolution works as a tinkerer who experiments with miscellaneous items, unsure of the outcome, and utilizes whatever is available to craft functional objects whose utility may only become evident later. None of the materials serve a defined purpose initially, and each can be employed in multiple ways. According to the tinkering concept, “evolution does not produce novelties from scratch".^[1] It comes from previously unseen associations of old materials to modify an existing system to give a new function or combine systems together to enhance the functions.^[2] The transformation from unicellular to multicellular during evolution is such an event which has elaborated the existing function.

The process of evolutionary tinkering takes quite a long time. As a meticulous tinkerer who continuously refines its creations, making adjustments, trimming and extending here and there, seizing every chance to gradually tailor them to their evolving purposes, this process happens over countless eons.^[1]

Most of the time, traits in nature are barely favorable enough for organisms to survive. For instance, RuBisCO is profoundly inefficient, despite the fact that it catalyzes one of the most important reactions on the planet: carbon fixation. This is likely due to the enzyme originating in the common ancestor of all plastids when the atmospheric conditions were drastically different than they are today.^[3]