Related papers: The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis Facilitates Ev…
Ecological systems are emergent features of ecological and adaptive dynamics of a community of interacting species. By natural selection through the abiotic environment and by co-adaptation within the community, species evolve, thereby…
How do shared conventions emerge in complex decentralized social systems? This question engages fields as diverse as linguistics, sociology and cognitive science. Previous empirical attempts to solve this puzzle all presuppose that formal…
Evolutionary computation (EC), as a powerful optimization algorithm, has been applied across various domains. However, as the complexity of problems increases, the limitations of EC have become more apparent. The advent of large language…
Darwin's hypothesis that all extant life forms are descendants of a last common ancestor cell and diversification of life forms results from gradual mutation plus natural selection represents a mainstream view that has influenced biology…
EVOC is a computer model of the EVOlution of Culture. It consists of neural network based agents that invent ideas for actions, and imitate neighbors' actions. EVOC replicates using a different fitness function the results obtained with an…
The Semantic Theory of Evolution (STE) takes the existence of a number of arbitrary communication codes as a fundamental feature of life, from the genetic code to human cultural communication codes. Their arbitrariness enables, at each…
This chapter synthesizes evidence from cognitive science, evolutionary theory, anthropology, psychological studies, and computational models for a complex systems inspired theory of creativity, and its role in cultural evolution. Creativity…
An evolutionary tree is a cascade of bifurcations starting from a single common root, generating a growing set of daughter species as time goes by. Species here is a general denomination for biological species, spoken languages or any other…
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,…
The current theory of evolution is almost the one Darwin and Wallace proposed two centuries ago and the following discoveries e.g., Mendelian genetics and neutral mutation theory have not made significant modifications. The current…
It is important to be clear as to whether a theory such as evolutionary archaeology pertains to biological evolution, in which acquired change is obliterated at the end of each generation, or cultural change, in which acquired change is…
Despite their claimed biological plausibility, most self organizing networks have strict topological constraints and consequently they cannot take into account a wide range of external stimuli. Furthermore their evolution is conditioned by…
Understanding how the structure of community interactions is modified by coevolution is vital for understanding system responses to change at all scales. However, in absence of a group selection process, collective community behaviours…
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…
Protein evolution underpins life, and understanding its behavior as a system is of great importance. However, our current models of protein evolution are arguably too simplistic to allow quantitative interpretation and prediction of…
Natural evolution has produced a tremendous diversity of functional organisms. Many believe an essential component of this process was the evolution of evolvability, whereby evolution speeds up its ability to innovate by generating a more…
Evolution by natural selection can be seen an algorithm for generating creative solutions to difficult problems. More precisely, evolution by natural selection is a class of algorithms that share a set of properties. The question we address…
Culture is not just traits but a dynamic system of interdependent beliefs, practices and artefacts embedded in cognitive, social and material structures. Culture evolves as these entities interact, generating path dependence, attractor…
In general Evolutionary Computation (EC) includes a number of optimization methods inspired by biological mechanisms of evolution. The methods catalogued in this area use the Darwinian principles of life evolution to produce algorithms that…
The evolution of complexity has been a central theme for Biology [2] and Artificial Life research [1]. It is generally agreed that complexity has increased in our universe, giving way to life, multi-cellularity, societies, and systems of…