Related papers: On Modelling Life
Biological organisms adapt to changes by processing informations from different sources, most notably from their ancestors and from their environment. We review an approach to quantify these informations by analyzing mathematical models of…
We dwell upon the physicist's conception of `life' since Schroedinger and Wigner through to the modern-day language of living systems in the light of quantum information. We discuss some basic features of a living system such as ordinary…
A major aim of evolutionary biology is to explain the respective roles of adaptive versus non-adaptive changes in the evolution of complexity. While selection is certainly responsible for the spread and maintenance of complex phenotypes,…
This paper makes a number of connections between life and various facets of genetic and evolutionary algorithms research. Specifically, it addresses the topics of adaptation, multiobjective optimization, decision making, deception, and…
Life depends as much on the flow of information as on the flow of energy. Here we review the many efforts to make this intuition precise. Starting with the building blocks of information theory, we explore examples where it has been…
Natural selection explains how life has evolved over millions of years from more primitive forms. The speed at which this happens, however, has sometimes defied formal explanations when based on random (uniformly distributed) mutations.…
Research investigating the origins of life usually focuses on exploring possible life-bearing chemistries in the pre-biotic Earth, or else on synthetic approaches. Little work has been done exploring fundamental issues concerning the…
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…
We introduce and analyse an individual-based evolutionary model, in which a population of genetically diverse organisms compete with each other for limited resources. Through theoretical analysis and stochastic simulations, we show that the…
We propose a minimal model of the dynamics of diversity -- replicator equations with extinction, invasion and mutation. We numerically study the behavior of this simple model and show that it displays completely different behavior from the…
The interaction between natural selection and random mutation is frequently debated in recent years. Does similar dilemma also exist in the evolution of real networks such as biological networks? In this paper, we try to discuss this issue…
In order to find out the limiting speed of solving a specific problem using computer, this essay provides a method based on information entropy. The relationship between the minimum computational complexity and information entropy change is…
A theoretical and experimental analysis is made of the effects of self-adaptation in a simple evolving system. Specifically, we consider the effects of coding the mutation and crossover probabilities of a genetic algorithm evolving in…
We consider the problem of the evolution of a code within a structured population of agents. The agents try to maximise their information about their environment by acquiring information from the outputs of other agents in the population. A…
Exploiting the mathematical curiosity of intransitive dice, we present a simple theoretical model for co-evolution that captures scales ranging from the genome of the individual to the system-wide emergence of species diversity. We study a…
A common trait of complex systems is that they can be represented by means of a network of interacting parts. It is, in fact, the network organisation (more than the parts) what largely conditions most higher-level properties, which are not…
The fields of Origin of Life and Artificial Life both question what life is and how it emerges from a distinct set of "pre-life" dynamics. One common feature of most substrates where life emerges is a marked shift in dynamics when…
A self-replicating system where the elements belonging to a solution category can replicate themselves by copying their own informations, is considered. The information carried by each element is defined by an element of all the n multiple…
Recently it has been demonstrated that causal entropic forces can lead to the emergence of complex phenomena associated with human cognitive niche such as tool use and social cooperation. Here I show that even more fundamental traits…
We compare and contrast the long-time dynamical properties of two individual-based models of biological coevolution. Selection occurs via multispecies, stochastic population dynamics with reproduction probabilities that depend nonlinearly…