Organism with Environment
Coevolution relates to the two-way interplay between an organism and aspects of its environment. It can occur in various forms. Firstly the organism can affect the physical environment, by changing the adaptive pressures on itself (e.g. by moving around, digging holes), thus the physical environment should not be regarded as a static 'object'. Secondly physical changes in this environment can affect the organism (e.g. weather changes) leading to adaptation such as changes in behaviour.

Organism with Organism
Most forms of coevolution will occur with respect to other organisms, and again there are several aspects to this. The interactions encountered can be with members of one's own species, either competitive or cooperative, with 'prey' species (lower on the food chain), with 'predator' species (higher on the food chain), with neutral species (at any level) and with kin (family).

Strategies
In evolutionary biology, economics and game theory the dynamics of such interactions lead to such concepts as 'Nash equilibria' or 'Evolutionary Stable Strategies' (ESS) - situations where no agent can improve their lot so long as the others continue with their current strategy. This leads to repetitive behaviours (cyclical attractors). In more complex situations the stability is at best temporary due to the multiplicity of influences.

Levels
Whilst the dynamics of all these forms of coevolution have many common systemic characteristics, we can divide them for explanatory purposes into three distinct levels related to the organistic or human needs involved in each.

Biophysical Coevolution - Level 3
At this level the world's physical resources are employed by biological organisms to meet their primal needs. In this dynamic, matter is transformed into life and conversely (upon death) life is transformed back into matter (recycling is endemic to this process). This two way interplay between the physical and biological realms is lost in the general separation between physical and biological sciences, although it does feature to some extent in the various cycles studied in biochemistry, and it also features significantly in the Gaia theory of James Lovelock. Many separate resources and different types of organisms operate here and in this mode we concentrate on the individual's coevolution between matter and life, the maintenance, in whatever way, of an autopoietic (self-sustaining) overall organism (body plus the lower instinctive mind aspects), in other words the emergence of 'life' itself.

Biosocial Coevolution - Level 2
In the next level up we study the interplay between individual lifeforms and their social fellows, the 'collective' behaviour. Here we engage a more complex dynamic whereby many types of social structure become possible, including the move between 'individual' and 'social' forms seen animal societies. They take on innumerable complex forms, and we can extend this to include the interplay between different species which are studied in ecology and ethology. In this mode many human behaviours fit well, especially our day-to-day social interactions - which take place largely unconsciously and are automatically constrained by our cultural norms (akin to animal instincts). This coevolution between life and society is, once more, largely missed by scientific compartmentalization - which separates biological, psychological and sociological disciplines. This level relates to the maintenance of an autopoietic socioecosystem (akin to the organization of a multicellular organism, but rather less constrained), the emergence of society and ecosystem.

Mythicosocial Coevolution - Level 1
The final level that we will consider is generally thought to apply only to humans, who uniquely have the ability to generate abstract ideas, non-material concepts like mathematics, philosophy, ethics and politics. They all affect how we behave and the dogmas we so often adopt, i.e. they are not, in any sense, irrelevant to science (in any of its forms) as is so often assumed by those of a purely 'materialist' or 'reductionist' bent, but they actually define and constrain the very behaviours employed within such disciplines.

As a result we have coevolution between our social level and a mythical (yet very real to all the people involved) world of the imagination, which takes place along many separate abstract dimensions. It is here that language and symbolism come to the fore and autopoiesis takes place largely in these realms. Academically, these dimensions are all kept divorced from one another, sometimes with murderous ferocity - even though they are all of the same type and all coevolve necessarily with each other.

At this autopoietic level, coevolution maintains the 'culture', in the form of our self-sustaining and self-reinforcing 'belief systems' or philosophical 'worldviews', and tries to defend such 'systems' - even in the face of contradictory 'facts'. This level relates to the emergence of 'virtual realities'.

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