The dismissal of Ewert’s dependency-graph work misses the point of what he was demonstrating. His model parallels what we see in every field of human design: a web of shared components and reused information rather than a simple branching tree of descent. The same engine can power cars, boats, and generators. The same software code can serve in phones, televisions, and computers, and, both human driven evolution and biological evolution, and we constantly see new hardware being integrated in novel ways. Yet it is not the hardware that matters most; it is the software which enables useful function.
This distinction exposes the core problem for naturalistic explanations. Where unguided processes might by chance produce a physical sub-system, there is no evidence that the corresponding informational system; the “software” that activates and coordinates it, can arise naturally. A flagellum or any other molecular structure might conceivably assemble by accident, but without the regulatory code that governs its timing and operation it is inert, like a novel computer processor with no OS able to run it is useless. Nature can produce amazing things using matter and energy, but it has never been shown to produce functional software.
That is what Ewert’s model reflects: systems of intentional reuse and integration, suggests guided evolution rather than blind descent. Biological organization, like human technology, shows coding, coordination, and outcome-based preference. Life does not merely persist; it strives, repairs, and preserves order against both physical and informational decay. That continual bias toward function and survival is not the signature of accident but the mark of mind acting within and upon nature.