The Evolutionary Memory of Cancer: From Oxygen Toxicity to Adaptive Mutation Simulation

This paper reframes cancer not merely as a pathological breakdown, but as a latent evolutionary mechanism—an internal simulation system reactivated under environmental crisis. Drawing parallels between the Great Oxidation Event and modern oxidative carcinogenesis, the study proposes that cancer may represent an adaptive mutation engine, historically retained for navigating unsolvable structural collapse. It explores the semantic memory of cells, cognitive analogies to semantic drift and misbinding, and therapeutic implications involving signal coherence rather than cellular destruction. By understanding cancer as a semantic divergence rather than just genetic error, this framework invites a new class of interventions—ones that restore meaning, not just suppress mutation.