Well Narkissos' musings on adaptions and environment were somewhat similar to those of a handful of microbiologists (albeit for a short time) in the late 80s to early 90s. It was an interesting phenomenon that Euphemism and others well versed in biology may have come across.
Under certain adverse environmental conditions, it looked like specific adaptations were being induced in E.Coli by the environment rather than just selecting mutations that happened beforehand. This same thing was also seen in yeast. Cairns was the scientist who brought this up I believe. He first called it "directed mutation" then it was renamed to "adaptive mutation" and others called it "Cairnsian mutation".
IIRC, subsequent research, has shown that the adverse conditions (usually an environment that starves the organism) apparently trigger mechanisms in the cell that increases mutation rates. A sort of internal means for the cell to influence its adaptedness if I understand it properly. The process of generating variants is sped up (and so then, is "hitting on" fitter ones). That can explain how it looked like the adaptations are being generated as a response to the environment or induced by it. But essentially the mutations that form are themselves still random ( in line with the accepted understanding of how things work).
G'night all.