Related papers: The Universal Evolution and the Origin of LIfe
Evolution has fascinated quantitative and physical scientists for decades: how can the random process of mutation, recombination, and duplication of genetic information generate the diversity of life? What determines the rate of evolution?…
Darwin's book, Origin of the Species has been a source of public controversy for more than hundred and fifty years. Court cases and mountains of words have not dispelled this controversy. In this paper, a quantitative approach using simple…
The focus of a survival study is partly on the distribution of survival times, and partly on the health or quality of life of patients while they live. Health varies over time, and survival is the most basic aspect of health, so the two…
Our understanding of the evolutionary process has gone a long way since the publication, 150 years ago, of "On the origin of species" by Charles R. Darwin. The XXth Century witnessed great efforts to embrace replication, mutation, and…
We develop a unified, dynamical-systems narrative of the universe that traces a continuous chain of structure formation from the Big Bang to contemporary human societies and their artificial learning systems. Rather than treating cosmology,…
Whether or not biodiversity dynamics tend toward stable equilibria remains an unsolved question in ecology and evolution with important implications for our understanding of diversity and its conservation. Phylo/population genetic models…
The classification of life should be based upon the fundamental mechanism in the evolution of life. We found that the global relationships among species should be circular phylogeny, which is quite different from the common sense based upon…
Since the time of Darwin, scientists have struggled to reconcile the evolution of biological forms in a universe determined by fixed laws. These laws underpin the origin of life, evolution, human culture and technology, as set by the…
The Hadean, once thought to be uninhabitable and tumultuous, has more recently been recontextualized as a clement time in which oceans, land, and life likely appeared on Earth. This non-exhaustive chapter follows multiple threads from…
If human societies are so complex, then how can we hope to understand them? Artificial Life gives us one answer. The field of Artificial Life comprises a diverse set of introspective studies that largely ask the same questions, albeit from…
It is undeniable that life as we know it depends on liquid water. It is difficult to imagine any biochemical machinery that does not require water. On Earth, life adapts to the most diverse environments and, once established, it is very…
This short text summarizes the work in biology proposed in our book, Perspectives on Organisms, where we analyse the unity proper to organisms by looking at it from different viewpoints. We discuss the theoretical roles of biological time,…
As Physics did in previous centuries, there is currently a common dream of extracting generic laws of nature in economics, sociology, neuroscience, by focalising the description of phenomena to a minimal set of variables and parameters,…
We pursue research leading towards the nature of causality in the universe. We establish the equation of the universe's evolution from the universe-state function and its series expansion, in which causes and effects connect together to…
The rich experiences of an intentional, goal-oriented life emerge, in an unpredictable fashion, from the basic laws of physics. Here I argue that this unpredictability is no mirage: there are true gaps between life and non-life, mind and…
Over the past 30 years many researchers in the field of evolutionary computation have put a lot of effort to introduce various approaches for solving hard problems. Most of these problems have been inspired by major industries so that…
Darwinism conceives evolution as a consequence of random variation and natural selection, hence it is based on a materialistic, i.e. matter-based, view of science inspired by classical physics. But matter in itself is considered a very…
We propose a scenario for the origin of life based on the coevolution of lipid bilayer vesicles and protein channels.
Surprisingly, the question "Is there Life in the Universe outside Earth?" has been raised, in rational terms, almost only in the western literature throughout the ages. In a first part I justify this statement. Then I try to develop an…
It has been proposed that, since the origin of life and the ensuing evolution of biological species, a second evolutionary process has appeared on our planet. It is the evolution of culture-e.g., ideas, beliefs, and artifacts. Does culture…