Related papers: Life is physics: evolution as a collective phenome…
Since protein mutations are the main driving force of evolution at the molecular level, a proper analysis of them (and the factors controlling them) will enable us to find a response to several crucial queries in evolutionary biology. Among…
In biology, the evolution of increasingly cooperative groups has shaped the history of life. Genes collaborate in the control of cells; cells efficiently divide tasks to produce cohesive multicellular individuals; individual members of…
Since Newton, all classical and quantum physics depends upon the "Newtonian Paradigm". Here the relevant variables of the system are identified. The boundary conditions creating the phase space of all possible values of the variables are…
A vast array of transformative technologies developed over the past decade has enabled measurement and perturbation at ever increasing scale, yet our understanding of many systems remains limited by experimental capacity. Overcoming this…
With a view to connecting random mutation on the molecular level to punctuated equilibrium behavior on the phenotype level, we propose a new model for biological evolution, which incorporates random mutation and natural selection. In this…
We argue that the stochastic dynamics of interacting agents which replicate, mutate and die constitutes a non-equilibrium physical process akin to aging in complex materials. Specifically, our study uses extensive computer simulations of…
We model evolution of plants in a world, made up of different locations, with multiple environments (mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive subsets of locations). Each environment (landmass) has temperature, rainfall, and other…
The multifarious internal workings of organisms are difficult to reconcile with a single feature defining a state of being alive. Indeed, definitions of life rely on emergent properties (growth, capacity to evolve, agency) only symptomatic…
We demonstrate with a thought experiment that fitness-based population dynamical approaches to evolution are not able to make quantitative, falsifiable predictions about the long-term behavior of evolutionary systems. A key characteristic…
The concept of (auto)catalytic systems has become a cornerstone in understanding evolutionary processes in various fields. The common ground is the observation that for the production of new species/goods/ideas/elements etc. the…
Quantum physics and biology have long been regarded as unrelated disciplines, describing nature at the inanimate microlevel on the one hand and living species on the other hand. Over the last decades the life sciences have succeeded in…
Biological evolution provides a creative fount of complex and subtle adaptations, often surprising the scientists who discover them. However, because evolution is an algorithmic process that transcends the substrate in which it occurs,…
While fields like Artificial Life have made huge strides in quantifying the mechanisms that distinguish living systems from non-living ones, particular mechanisms remain difficult to reproduce in silico. Known as open-endedness, we've been…
Jim Shapiro synthesizes a great many observations about the mechanisms of evolution to reach the remarkable conclusion that large-scale modification, exchange, and rearrangement of the genome are common and should be viewed as fundamental…
We develop a ``unified'' model that describes both ``micro'' and ``macro'' evolutions within a single theoretical framework. The eco-system is described as a dynamic network; the population dynamics at each node of this network describes…
By unifying three foundational principles of modern biology, we develop a mathematical framework to analyze the growing tree of life. Contrary to the static case, where the analogy between phylogenetic trees and the tree that grows in soil…
This document is the Special Issue of the First International Conference on the Evolution and Development of the Universe (EDU 2008). Please refer to the preface and introduction for more details on the contributions. Keywords:…
Eco-evolutionary dynamics, or eco-evolution for short, are thought to involve rapid demography (ecology) and equally rapid phenotypic changes (evolution) leading to novel, emergent system behaviours. This focus on contemporary dynamics is…
The dynamics of molecular collisions in a macroscopic body are encoded by the parameter Thermodynamic entropy - a statistical measure of the number of molecular configurations that correspond to a given macrostate. Directionality in the…
This chapter begins by outlining a promising, new theoretical framework for the process by which human culture evolves inspired by the views of complexity theorists on the problem of how life began. Elements of culture, like species, evolve…