Does Earth's habitability for life exist due to or in spite of Darwinian evolution by natural selection?

The average long-term impact of Darwinian evolution on the stability of Earth’s climate and geochemical composition remains extremely uncertain, due to a separation of spatiotemporal scales between Earth-system feedback processes and the biological units upon which natural selection acts(1,2). Its-the-song-not-the-singers (ITSNTS) theory attempts to bridge this scale separation, by relaxing the definition of selection to include differentially persisting nonreplicating entities, including biogeochemical cycles(3,4). But ITSNTS lacks a means to quantify and compare the differential persistence of the “cycle-biota-variants” it implicitly postulates. Field theory(5) describes goal-directed processes (including adaptative dynamics), through reference to external “fields” that direct lower-level entities(6) – allowing for a naturalistic account of teleology and evolutionary trends toward complexity(7). This project will combine ITSNTS and field theory in order to derive a “Darwinized” understanding of life-environment coevolution. This will be achieved by assessing two concrete scientific hypotheses: A. Habitability promoting life-environment patterns tend to “outcompete” habitability degrading patterns via persistence selection for distinct geochemical impacts(8). B. Extreme abiotic environmental bottlenecks tend to select for biological complexity by making viability, rather than fecundity, the dominant component of fitness(9). The philosophical implications of these ideas for questions of purpose, complexity and directionality will also be framed in terms of a detailed evaluation of the idea that life is an inherently planetary phenomenon.