Related papers: Primordial Evolution in the Finitary Process Soup
Hierarchy is one of the most conspicuous features of numerous natural, technological and social systems. The underlying structures are typically complex and their most relevant organizational principle is the ordering of the ties among the…
How do complex adaptive systems, such as life, emerge from simple constituent parts? In the 1990s Walter Fontana and Leo Buss proposed a novel modeling approach to this question, based on a formal model of computation known as $\lambda$…
Composition is a powerful principle for systems biology, focused on the interfaces, interconnections, and orchestration of distributed processes to enable integrative multiscale simulations. Whereas traditional models focus on the structure…
There has been a long debate on how new levels of organization have evolved. It might seem unlikely, as cooperation must prevail over competition. One well-studied example is the emergence of autocatalytic sets, which seem to be a…
Although it has been notoriously difficult to pin down precisely what it is that makes life so distinctive and remarkable, there is general agreement that its informational aspect is one key property, perhaps the key property. The unique…
Background: Autocatalytic sets are often considered a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for the origin and early evolution of life. Although the idea of autocatalytic sets was already conceived of many years ago, only recently have…
Bio-inspired algorithms utilize natural processes such as evolution, swarm behavior, foraging, and plant growth to solve complex, nonlinear, high-dimensional optimization problems. However, a plethora of these algorithms require a more…
Plasticity-led evolution is a form of evolution where a change in the environment induces novel traits via phenotypic plasticity, after which the novel traits are genetically accommodated over generations under the novel environment. This…
The growth of world population, limitation of resources, economic problems and environmental issues force engineers to develop increasingly efficient solutions for logistic systems. Pure optimization for efficiency, however, has often led…
Modeling environmental ecosystems is essential for effective resource management, sustainable development, and understanding complex ecological processes. However, traditional methods frequently struggle with the inherent complexity,…
The question what determines the structure of natural food webs has been listed among the nine most important unanswered questions in ecology. It arises naturally from many problems related to ecosystem stability and resilience. The…
Establishing the emergence of evolutionary behavior as a defining characteristic of 'life' is a major step in the Artificial life (ALife) studies. We present here an abstract formal framework for this aim based upon the notion of high-level…
In this paper, we develop a natural (empirical) relational theory for describing and modeling complex biological phenomena. We have as stepping stone the assertion: function implies structure. The theory is built upon a graph's theory…
A series of simulations aimed at elucidating the self-assembly dynamics of spherical virus capsids is described. This little-understood phenomenon is a fascinating example of the complex processes that occur in the simplest of organisms.…
The idea is advanced that self-organization in complex systems can be treated as decision making (as it is performed by humans) and, vice versa, decision making is nothing but a kind of self-organization in the decision maker nervous…
Modeling the spontaneous evolution of morphology in natural systems and its preservation by proportionate growth remains a major scientific challenge. Yet, it is conceivable that if the basic mechanisms of growth and the coupled kinetic…
We incorporate the generic hierarchical architecture of foodwebs into a "{\it unified}" model that describes both "micro" and "macro" evolutions within a single theoretical framework. This model describes the "micro" -evolution in detail by…
Living soft tissues appear to promote the development and maintenance of a preferred mechanical state within a defined tolerance around a so-called set-point. This phenomenon is often referred to as mechanical homeostasis. In contradiction…
Natural selection successfully explains how organisms accumulate adaptive change despite that traits acquired over a lifetime are eliminated at the end of each generation. However, in some domains that exhibit cumulative, adaptive change --…
It has been pointed out that if an autocatalytic cycle produces primitive membrane chemicals, it can compose a self-maintaining proto cell. Moreover, it is known that a proto cell can divide itself spontaneously as it grows. An unsolved…