Learning: Adaptive or exaptive? New prospects for theorizing cognitive transformation

Borrowed from biology exaptation is often counterposed to adaptation. However, the possibility of theorizing some learning as exaptive has not yet been explored. Covering this research gap the article discusses various meanings of adaptive learning and introduces exaptive learning as a new and promising notion of cross-disciplinary benefit. The article also indicates some risks. Like other learnings, exaptive learning may be co-opted by the politics of learning or it may nourish excessive and unsubstantiated hope for ethico-political transformation. Despite such risks, I argue that exaptive learning is distinct enough to merit its own conceptual space as an important analytical tool for theorizing some cognitive transformation.