Related papers: Towards a Theory of Evolution as Multilevel Learni…
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…
In this paper, we make the case that a scientific theory of deep learning is emerging. By this we mean a theory which characterizes important properties and statistics of the training process, hidden representations, final weights, and…
Meta-learning, the notion of learning to learn, enables learning systems to quickly and flexibly solve new tasks. This usually involves defining a set of outer-loop meta-parameters that are then used to update a set of inner-loop…
The idea that all life on earth traces back to a common beginning dates back at least to Charles Darwin's {\em Origin of Species}. Ever since, biologists have tried to piece together parts of this `tree of life' based on what we can observe…
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…
Cooperation is a widespread natural phenomenon yet current evolutionary thinking is dominated by the paradigm of selfish competition. Recent advanced in many fronts of Biology and Non-linear Physics are helping to bring cooperation to its…
Motivated by a recent article on open problems in artificial life, here I postulate three laws which form a mathematical framework to describe artificial life evolutionary dynamics. They are based on a continuous approximation of population…
The evolutionary biology of aging is fundamental to understanding the mechanisms of aging and how to develop anti-aging treatments. Thus far most evolutionary theory concerns the genetics of aging with limited physiological integration.…
Evolution of life on earth was governed, primarily, by natural selection, with major contribution of other evolutionary processes, such as neutral variation, exaptation, and gene duplication. However, for biological evolution to take off, a…
This review is an introduction to theoretical models and mathematical calculations for biological evolution, aimed at physicists. The methods in the field are naturally very similar to those used in statistical physics, although the…
As Evolutionary Dynamics moves from the realm of theory into application, algorithms are needed to move beyond simple models. Yet few such methods exist in the literature. Ecological and physiological factors are known to be central to…
We study open-ended evolution by focusing on computational and information-processing dynamics underlying major evolutionary transitions. In doing so, we consider biological organisms as hierarchical dynamical systems that generate…
Life is confronted with computation problems in a variety of domains including animal behavior, single-cell behavior, and embryonic development. Yet we currently do not know of a naturally existing biological system that is capable of…
Neuroscientists have long criticised deep learning algorithms as incompatible with current knowledge of neurobiology. We explore more biologically plausible versions of deep representation learning, focusing here mostly on unsupervised…
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…
This chapter is an overview of foundational results in the mathematical theory of replicator systems. Its primary aim is to provide a unified framework for the mathematical formalisation of evolutionary processes in the spirit of…
The co-evolution of network topology and dynamics is studied in an evolutionary Boolean network model that is a simple model of gene regulatory network. We find that a critical state emerges spontaneously resulting from interplay between…
The concept of fitness is introduced, and a simple derivation of the Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection (which states that the average fitness of a population increases if its variance is nonzero) is given. After a short discussion of…
One of the main properties of biological systems is modularity, which manifests itself at all levels of their organization, starting with the level of molecular genetics, ending with the level of whole organisms and their communities. In a…
The continuity of life and its evolution, we proposed, emerge from an interactive group process manifested in networks of interaction. We term this process \textit{survival-of-the-fitted}. Here, we reason that survival of the fitted results…