Related papers: Primordial Evolution in the Finitary Process Soup
Humans learn complex latent structures from their environments (e.g., natural language, mathematics, music, social hierarchies). In cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience, models that infer higher-order structures from sensory or…
This paper presents a high-level conceptual framework to help orient the discussion and implementation of open-endedness in evolutionary systems. Drawing upon earlier work by Banzhaf et al., three different kinds of open-endedness are…
Species-rich communities, such as the microbiota or microbial ecosystems, provide key functions for human health and climatic resilience. Increasing effort is being dedicated to design experimental protocols for selecting community-level…
Combinatorial evolution - the creation of new things through the combination of existing things - can be a powerful way to evolve rather than design technical objects such as electronic circuits. Intriguingly, this seems to be an ongoing…
This manuscript explores the evolutionary emergence of semantic closure -- the self-referential mechanism through which symbols actively construct and interpret their own functional contexts -- by integrating concepts from relational…
Based on the oligomer-world hypothesis we propose an abstract model where the molecular recognition among oligomers is described in the shape space. The origin of life in the oligomer world is regarded as the establishment of a metabolic…
The evolution of structure in biology is driven by accretion and change. Accretion brings together disparate parts to form bigger wholes. Change provides opportunities for growth and innovation. Here we review patterns and processes that…
Empirical evidence suggesting that living systems might operate in the vicinity of critical points, at the borderline between order and disorder, has proliferated in recent years, with examples ranging from spontaneous brain activity to…
Self-Other Reorganization (SOR) is a theory of how interacting entities or individuals, each of which can be described as an autocatalytic network, collectively exhibit cumulative, adaptive, open-ended change, or evolution. Zachar et al.'s…
A simple model for the formation of a complex organism is introduced. Individuals can communicate and specialize, leading to an increase in productivity. If there are limits to the capacity of individuals to communicate with other…
We introduce the concept of an abstract evolution system, which provides a convenient framework for studying generic mathematical structures and their properties. Roughly speaking, an evolution system is a category endowed with a selected…
Systems of systems differ from traditional systems in that they are open at the top, open at the bottom, and continually (but slowly) evolving. "Open at the top" means that there is no pre-defined top level application. New applications may…
We have generalized our ``unified'' model of evolutionary ecology by taking into account the possible movements of the organisms from one ``patch'' to another within the same eco-system. We model the spatial extension of the eco-system…
Consider a population of heterogenous agents whose choice behaviors are partially \textit{comparable} according to a given \textit{primitive ordering}.The set of choice functions admissible in the population specifies a \textit{choice…
Biological systems reach organizational complexity that far exceeds the complexity of any known inanimate objects. Biological entities undoubtedly obey the laws of quantum physics and statistical mechanics. However, is modern physics…
Self-sustaining autocatalytic networks play a central role in living systems, from metabolism at the origin of life, simple RNA networks, and the modern cell, to ecology and cognition. A collectively autocatalytic network that can be…
In this work, we discovered a fundamental connection between selection for protein stability and emergence of preferred structures of proteins. Using standard exact 3-dimensional lattice model we evolve sequences starting from random ones…
We study the probabilities of evolution based on random mutations and natural selection. We conclude that evolution to multicellular eukaryots, or even prokaryots, is unlikely to be the result of only random mutations. Complex organisms…
Hierarchical structure is an essential part of complexity, important notion relevant for a wide range of applications ranging from biological population dynamics through robotics to social sciences. In this paper we propose a simple…
Understanding the origins of complexity is a fundamental challenge with implications for biological and technological systems. Network theory emerges as a powerful tool to model complex systems. Networks are an intuitive framework to…