Is Natural Drift a Mechanism?

In its current formulation, natural drift, despite being non-adapta-tionist, apparently follows the machine metaphor. I scrutinize the notion of ma-chines on the basis of the four Aristo-telian causes and argue that, following Rosen's work, living systems are causal systems but not mechanisms and, therefore, not "machines." This leads to the question as to whether natural drift is a blind and reactive mechanism or whether it entails anticipation in the sense that organisms are able to distin-guish the potential effects of their ac-tions on their environment. This aspect has a bearing on the question of wheth-er natural drift can account for the ori-gin of Earth's habitability.