---
title: "Recursive Niche Construction"
description: "Bratton's mechanism for the Noocene, borrowed from evolutionary biology and made runaway."
type: "glossary-term"
canonical_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/terms/recursive-niche-construction"
md_url: "https://antikythera.wiki/md/terms/recursive-niche-construction"
last_updated: "2026-09-06"
site: "Antikythera Wiki"
---

# Recursive Niche Construction

> A working definition written for this wiki from the reading notes; not Antikythera's own wording. From Antikythera Wiki (https://antikythera.wiki/terms/recursive-niche-construction), an independent guide to Antikythera's published work.

Bratton's mechanism for the Noocene, borrowed from evolutionary biology and made runaway. A lifeform alters its niche to capture more energy, matter and information; the altered niche imposes new selection pressures; the species then adapts to demands it indirectly created, so it "artificializes itself by artificializing its world and vice versa." The cycle, not the species, is the agent: humans are the *medium* through which complex intelligence terraformed Earth, "the vehicle of the Noocene but not its master." The open fork is what happens when the cycle artificializes intelligence itself (AI): an "advanced Noocene, or something else." Cousin of Likavčan's "assisted evolution" and WII's symbiogenetic major transitions.

## Appears in

- [The Noocene](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/noocene) (2025-11-21)
- [The Long L](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/longl) (2025-11-21)
- [Cognitive Infrastructures](https://antikythera.wiki/work/journal/coginfra) (2025-05-10)

_Glossary generated 2026-09-06._