相关论文: Quantifying exaptation in scientific evolution

Although definitions of technology exist to explain the patterns of technological innovations, there is no general definition that explain the role of technology for humans and other animal species in environment. The goal of this study is…

Science is becoming increasingly more interdisciplinary, giving rise to more diversity in the areas of expertise within research labs and groups. This also have brought changes to the role researchers in scientific works. As a consequence,…

In scientific research, the method is an indispensable means to solve scientific problems and a critical research object. With the advancement of sciences, many scientific methods are being proposed, modified, and used in academic…

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,…

A new definition of entropy is introduced using a model that simulates an expanding space-time compatible with the fundamental principle of cosmology. The entropy is obtained by mean of a state function that measures the variation of the…

The Gene Ontology aims to define the universe of functions known for gene products, at the molecular, cellular and organism levels. While the ontology is designed to cover all aspects of biology in a "species independent manner", the fact…

This paper states the case for applying the conceptual and analytic tools associated with the study of entropy in physical systems to cognition, focusing on creative cognition. It is proposed that minds modify their contents and adapt to…

This book brings new mathematical rigour to the ongoing vigorous debate on how to quantify biological diversity. The question "what is diversity?" has surprising mathematical depth, and breadth too: this book involves parts of mathematics…

We analyze the population dynamics of a broad class of fitness functions that exhibit epochal evolution---a dynamical behavior, commonly observed in both natural and artificial evolutionary processes, in which long periods of stasis in an…

The combination of diverse, pre-existing knowledge is a common explanation for scientific breakthroughs. However, a paradox exists: while scientific output and the potential for such recombination have grown exponentially, the rate of…

Many species engage in acts that could be called creative. However, human creativity is unique in that it has transformed our planet. Given that the anatomy of the human brain is not so different from that of the great apes, what enables us…

Molecular traits, such as gene expression levels or protein binding affinities, are increasingly accessible to quantitative measurement by modern high-throughput techniques. Such traits measure molecular functions and, from an evolutionary…

The goal of Artificial Life research, as articulated by Chris Langton, is "to contribute to theoretical biology by locating life-as-we-know-it within the larger picture of life-as-it-could-be" (1989, p.1). The study and pursuit of…

The Observation--Hypothesis--Prediction--Experimentation loop paradigm for scientific research has been practiced by researchers for years towards scientific discoveries. However, with data explosion in both mega-scale and milli-scale…

Innovation and obsolescence describe dynamics of ever-churning and adapting social and biological systems, concepts that encompass field-specific formulations. We formalize the connection with a reduced model of the dynamics of the "space…

Biodiversity and extinction are central issues in evolution. Dynamical balance among different species in ecosystems is often described by deterministic replicator equations with moderate success. However, fluctuations are inevitable,…

Traditionally evolution is seen as a process where from a pool of possible variations of a population (e.g. biological species or industrial goods) a few variations get selected which survive and proliferate, whereas the others vanish.…

Many systems involve numerous interacting parts and the whole system can have properties that the individual parts do not. I take this novelty as the defining characteristic of an emergent property. Other characteristics associated with…

Aging is a universal consequence of life, yet researchers have identified no universal theme. This manuscript considers aging from the perspective of entropy, wherein things fall apart. We first examine biological information change as a…

The theory of interaction-based evolution argues that, at the most basic level of analysis, there is a third alternative for how adaptive evolution works besides a) accidental mutation and natural selection and b) Lamarckism, namely, c)…