Brain plasticity is a third term beyond genetic chance and necessity

Evidence

We can now understand why Jean-Pierre Changeux claims that the ‘‘discovery of the synapse and its functions’’ was as revolutionary as the discovery of DNA: the former brings to the latter a level of precision and a modification so significant that it seems almost to contradict it. Brain plasticity constitutes a possible margin of improvisation with regard to genetic necessity. Today it is no longer chance versus necessity, but chance, necessity, and plasticity—which is neither the one nor the other. … If neuronal function is an event or should bring about events, this is so precisely because it is itself able to create events, to eventualize [e´ve´nementialiser] the program and thus, in a certain sense, to deprogram it. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 47

Categorization

• DEFINE: Plasticity defined as neither chance nor necessity, but an improvisational margin that can deprogram genetic necessity — the active/giving side of plasticity.
• XREF: connects to: Birth-canal constraints halted brain expansion and forced postbirth growth tricks — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 213