III. Ecosmos: A Revolutionary Fertile, Habitable, Solar-Bioplanet, Incubator Lifescape

Baladron, Carlos and Andrei Khrennikov. Outline of a Unified Darwinian Evolutionary Theory for Physical and Biological Systems. Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology. Online May, 2017. Universidad de Valladolid, Spain, and Linnaeus University, Sweden researchers continue to conceive ways that life and mind can be theoretically joined with the resident, favorable cosmos from which they naturally arise. A prime, unifying feature ought to be an informational quality, as it traces a continuum from deep quantum domains to our retrospective witness, akin to J. A. Wheeler’s “it form bit” version. Three main principles of an optimizing complex structure, dynamic information flow, and system interactions are seen to distinguish.

The scheme of a unified Darwinian evolutionary theory for physical and biological systems is described. Every physical system is methodologically endowed with a classical information processor what turns every system into an agent being also susceptible to evolution. Biological systems retain this structure as natural extensions of physical systems from which they are built up. Optimization of information flows turns out to be the key element to study the possible emergence of quantum behavior and the unified Darwinian description of physical and biological systems. The Darwinian natural selection scheme is completed by the Lamarckian component in the form of the anticipation of states of surrounding bio-physical systems. (Abstract)

Ball, Philip. Quantum Darwinism, an Idea to Explain Objective Reality, Passes First Tests. Quanta Magazine. Online July 22, 2019. The British science writer and 2018 European physics book winner for Beyond Weird provides a luminous entry to this title theory by Wojciech Zurek (search). In a capsule, it aims to detect and explain a selective process in effect amongst an optional array of conditions even at this physical phase. After a course through decoherence, observation, superposition, and more, it is reported that three independent projects now seem to offer experimental proofs of its validity. As the deepest substrate for our expansive cosmos, as a singular universe to human continuum is being revealed, so also is a pervasive presence of this evolutionary computational scheme of multiple variation and preferential result.

The vexing question becomes: How do quantum probabilities coalesce into the sharp focus of the classical world? But there’s no reason to think that the large and the small have different rules. One of the most remarkable ideas is that the definite properties of objects that we associate with classical physics are selected from a menu of quantum possibilities in a process loosely analogous to natural selection in evolution: The properties that survive are in some sense the “fittest.” As in natural selection, the survivors are those that make the most copies of themselves. This means that many independent observers can make measurements of a quantum system and agree on the outcome — a hallmark of classical behavior. This idea, called quantum Darwinism, explains a lot about why we experience the world the way we do. (1)

Brandao, Fernando, et al. Generic Emergence of Classical Features in Quantum Darwinism. Nature Communications. 6/7908, 2015. FB University College London, Marco Piani, University of Waterloo, Canada and Pawel Horodecki, Technical University of Gdansk press on with verifications and enhancements of W. Zurek’s original theory (see below) that multiple variations and selective retentions occur even within this deepest, austere realm. Fig. 1 is titled Quantum Darwinism treats the environment as a carrier of information, while Fig. 5 is Quantum correlations leads to classicality.

Quantum Darwinism posits that only specific information about a quantum system that is redundantly proliferated to many parts of its environment becomes accessible and objective, leading to the emergence of classical reality. However, it is not clear under what conditions this mechanism holds true. Here we prove that the emergence of classical features along the lines of quantum Darwinism is a general feature of any quantum dynamics: observers who acquire information indirectly through the environment have effective access at most to classical information about one and the same measurement of the quantum system. Our analysis does not rely on a strict conceptual splitting between a system-of-interest and its environment, and allows one to interpret any system as part of the environment of any other system. (Abstract)

Bromham, Lindell. Curiously the Same: Swapping Tools Between Linguistics and Evolutionary Biology. Biology & Philosophy. Online September, 2017. We cite here because an Australian National University, Canberra, ecological philosopher can trace to an ever-expanding synthesis of such Darwinian dynamics across every area from cosmos to life’s creaturely development onto cultural literacies.

Brown, Joel. Why Darwin Would Have Loved Evolutionary Game Theory. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Vol. 283/Iss. 1838, 2016. I use evolutionary game theory to define, understand and model therapeutic strategies within the framework of viewing tumors as ecosystems with ecologically and evolutionary dynamic populations of cancer cells. is how the University of Illinois at Chicago biologist describes his research project. As entries in this section try to express, it is vital to grasp and assimilate nature’s actual procreative way of profligate candidates and selective optimization. Although one may question this method, such an evolutionary process is in effect from a multiversal cosmos to metastasizing cells. We then ought to ask, what is being preferred, emerging, chosen – is collaborative medical knowledge a form of the natural genetic code reaching conscious perception, by which it can be fed back to palliate, cure, and prevent future disease?

Humans have marvelled at the fit of form and function, the way organisms' traits seem remarkably suited to their lifestyles and ecologies. While natural selection provides the scientific basis for the fit of form and function, Darwin found certain adaptations vexing or particularly intriguing: sex ratios, sexual selection and altruism. The logic behind these adaptations resides in frequency-dependent selection where the value of a given heritable phenotype (i.e. strategy) to an individual depends upon the strategies of others. Game theory is a branch of mathematics that is uniquely suited to solving such puzzles. Game theory not only applies to matrix games and social games, it also applies to speciation, macroevolution and perhaps even to cancer. I assert that life and natural selection are a game, and that game theory is the appropriate logic for framing and understanding adaptations. Its scope can include behaviours within species, state-dependent strategies (such as male, female and so much more), speciation and coevolution, and expands beyond microevolution to macroevolution. Game theory clarifies aspects of ecological and evolutionary stability in ways useful to understanding eco-evolutionary dynamics, niche construction and ecosystem engineering. (Abstract)

Campbell, John O. Bayesian Methods and Universal Darwinism. AIP Conference Proceedings. 1193/40, 2009. At a biannual Bayesian Inference and Maximum Entropy Methods workshop, the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, physicist draws on these latest theories to better understand how a dynamic natural evolution might actually work. As others sense (Watson, Knuth, Mayfield), some generic process involving “populations of probabilities” from which may be chosen better candidates for subsequent iterations and sufficient optimization, seems to be going on. In a conducive spacescape, the same “Darwinian” evolutionary selections can equally apply to the whole cosmos. A 2012 posting by JOC on arXiv (search) expands the case, and the Wikipedia site for Universal Darwinism is a good entry and reference list.

Bayesian methods since the time of Laplace have been understood by their practitioners as closely aligned to the scientific method. Many philosophers of science including Karl Popper and Donald Campbell have interpreted the evolution of Science as a Darwinian process consisting of a ‘copy with selective retention’ algorithm abstracted from Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection. Arguments are presented for an isomorphism between Bayesian Methods and Darwinian processes. Universal Darwinism, as the term has been developed by Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Susan Blackmore, is the collection of scientific theories which explain the creation and evolution of their subject matter as due to the Operation of Darwinian processes. These subject matters span the fields of atomic physics, chemistry, biology and the social sciences. An explanation is proposed for the existence of this subject matter as due to the evolution of constraints in the form of adaptations imposed on Maximum Entropy. It is argued these adaptations were discovered and instantiated through the Operations of a succession of Darwinian processes. (Abstract excerpts)

Campbell, John O. Universal Darwinism as a Process of Bayesian Inference. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. June, 2016. The Victoria, BC researcher continues his project to express how Darwinian variation and selection may be appreciated as a general feature of not only Earth life, but across a natural evolutionary cosmos.

Many of the mathematical frameworks describing natural selection are equivalent to Bayes' Theorem, also known as Bayesian updating. By definition, a process of Bayesian Inference is one which involves a Bayesian update, so we may conclude that these frameworks describe natural selection as a process of Bayesian inference. Bayesian inference is an algorithm for the accumulation of evidence-based knowledge. This algorithm is now seen to operate over a wide range of evolutionary processes, including natural selection, the evolution of mental models and cultural evolutionary processes, notably including science itself. The variational principle of free energy minimization may thus serve as a unifying mathematical framework for universal Darwinism, the study of evolutionary processes operating throughout nature. (Abstract excerpts)

Campbell, John O. and Michael Price. Universal Darwinism and the Origins of Order. Georgiev, Georgi, et al, eds. Evolution, Development and Complexity. International: Springer, 2019. In a chapter from a 2017 conference with the book title (search editor), a British Columbia independent researcher and a Brunel University evolutionary psychologist scope out a growing sense that life’s “variance – inheritance – selection” method is even in effect across temporal cosmic to cultural domains. By this view, this scheme becomes a computational, probabilistic iteration whence out of many contingent candidates an “optimum” result might eventually be achieved. The paper then introduces a novel quality that such a universe seems to favor and advance, namely an “accumulated knowledge repository.” As the Abstract and quote note, a five stage scale is cited whereof each phase contains more relative informational content.

In regard, this natural learning process serves to trace and track an oriented course from universe to us peoples, akin to J. A. Wheeler’s bit to it circuit. Although not mentioned, we Earthling interlocutors seem to be involved with its actual discovery, self-selection and literate cocreation. But an imagination of a greater phenomenal reality with an independent, genetic-like self-organization remains elusive to the authors and conference. The manifest knowledge resource, akin to Ken Richardson’s biogrammar (search), does not yet have a tangible identity. As it may at last ascend to our prodigious sapiensphere, maybe a global “geonome” appreciation would be apt.

In this chapter we describe a ‘universal Darwinism’ which proposes that the observable universe results from two types of processes: (1) disorder’s tendency to increase in isolated systems (second law of thermodynamics), and (2) Darwinian selection, which produces orderly entities that can withstand the second law. Darwinian processes generate complex order not just in the biological phase but in all five domains of nature as they exist in a nested hierarchy of cosmological, quantum, biological, neural, and cultural. Each qualifies as a distinct stage by being characterized by a relative ‘knowledge repository’, that is, a cumulative store of information about existence (e.g. a genome).

Knowledge repositories are probabilistic models which make guesses about how to exist, which are then tested by the ‘embodied adapted system’ (e.g. phenotype). The repository then undergoes a Bayesian update, and thus becomes less ignorant and less entropic. These natural inferential systems evolve according to ‘variance – inheritance – selection’ Darwinian dynamics. For each new phase, its repository computationally transforms the substrate of the earlier domain (e.g., cultural repositories orchestrate the neural substrate), to generate new, innovative ways of overcoming the second law. We conclude that Darwinian theory, as an explanation for the origins of complex order in the universe, may be far more fundamental than is conventionally supposed. (Abstract)

We suggest that nature has utilized the selective Darwinian process to accumulate repositories of evolutionary knowledge within several domains of nature. We will discuss five types of autopoietic knowledge repositories, one in each domain of nature: (1) in the cosmological domain, this knowledge repository is represented by the laws and parameters of physics; (2) in the quantum domain, by quantum wave functions; (3) in the biological domain, by genomes (potentially acting in concert with epigenetic effects); (4) in the neural domain, by learned neural models; and (5) in the cultural domain, by cultural models. It is no accident that each natural domain possesses its own repository of accumulated knowledge, because the presence of such a knowledge repository is in fact our criterion for identifying each domain. (4)

Carneiro, Robert. Stellar Evolution and Social Evolution: A Study in Parallel Processes. Grinin, Leonid, et al, eds. Evolution: Cosmic, Biological, and Social. Volgograd: Uchitel Publishing, 2011. The University of Wisconsin anthropologist has been since 1969 the Curator of the American Museum of Natural History. It is then significant that a premier Western scholar recognizes and contributes to this Russian/Eastern genesis vision, which allows him to perceive across a widest stretch that stars and villages seem to form and evolve in parallel ways. He goes on to propose, as a flurry of recent papers (Khaluf 2017) attest to, that a relational repetition seems to occur throughout animal and human realms, indeed a “multilinear” life history from stars to societies.

So there we have it. There are indeed a number of parallels between stellar evolution as astronomers and astrophysicists have revealed it and social evolution as anthropologists have reconstructed it. Both sets of scientists make effective use of the comparative method. Both find in their phenomena distinct sequences and stages of development. Some of these sequences can be termed unilinear, while others are multilinear. Both sets of scientists attempt to lay bare the driving forces underlying the sequences they observe. Both find in the entities they study differential rates of evolution which are closely related to their size. And finally, both astronomy and astrophysics, on the one hand, and anthropology, on the other, see in the evolution of their phenomena a progression from simple, diffuse, and inchoate beginnings to a level of development in which complexity is a common and prominent feature. (81-82)

This article may permit them (anthropologists) to see more clearly that what culture has done is to take up the torch of a universal process which began eons ago with the Big Bang, and which continues, at an accelerated pace, throughout the Universe. This process has seen stars evolve to the point where, in at least one tiny corner of a particular galaxy, conditions developed which allowed a presumptuous primate to arise. (82)

Christian, David. Universal Darwinism and Human History. Grinin, Leonid and Andrey Korotayev, eds.. Evolution: From Big Bang to Nanobots. Volgograd: Uchitel Publishing, 2015. (One does worry over the technical subtitle which is at odds with the overall theme.) The Macquarie University, Sydney historian is the main founder of the popular expansive project to join cosmic and human durations under a common rubric of Big History, so to express their dynamic trajectory and unity. This chapter in the Russian almanac of “universal evolutionism” is an essay to integrate these vistas. But it also contains some persistent contradictions that daunt the effort. While the entire cosmic scenario within which Earth and its human phase are rooted and spring needs to be fully admitted, since only men are involved (in any land, field or journal) it remains an abstraction, no essential identify or purpose of its overall own can be conceived.

Christian curiously applies an excessive use of machinery and mechanism terms, which is off-putting and imperils the well-intended enterprise. To his credit, e.g. he adds a main vector of complexity and information, but as due to “Darwinian machines.” (67) The Three Darwinian Learning Machines section gives a valid trend of a relative creaturely knowledge from contingent mutation and selection, onto individual educations, and a third phase of collective intelligence. This basis leads to a universal Darwinian evolutionism as a cumulative learning process. But once again, any sense of an inherent drive and destiny is not present. See also Christian’s earlier essay The Evolution of Big History: A Short Introduction in Evolution: A Big History Perspective (Uchitel, 2011), second abstract.

This essay discusses Universal Darwinism: the idea that Darwinian mechanisms can explain interesting evolutionary change in many different domains, in both the Humanities and the Natural Sciences. The idea should appeal to Big Historians because it links research into evolutionary change at many different scales. But the detailed workings of Universal Darwinism vary as it drives different vehicles, just as internal combustion engines differ in chain-saws, motor cycles and airplane engines. To extend Darwin's ideas beyond the biological realm, we must disentangle the biological version of the Darwinian mechanism from several other forms. The paper focuses particularly on Universal Darwinism as a form of learning, a way of accumulating information. This will make it easier to make the adjustments needed to explore Darwinian mechanisms in human history. (2015 Abstract)

James Joyce's strange masterpiece, Finnegans Wake, is fractal. You can read it
at many different scales, but you always have the eerie feeling that you are hearing a story you have already heard somewhere else. A mathematician might say the stories are ‘self-similar.’ (61) This paper explores one of these fractal phenomena: ‘Universal Darwinism’. In biology, the Darwinian paradigm describes a distinctive form of evolutionary change that generates adaptive change through repeated copying of selected variants. Universal Darwinism is the idea that similar mechanisms may also work in many other domains. If so, do they always work as they do in biology? Or can we distinguish between a core machinery and the modifications needed to drive it in different environments? (62)

Big history represents a modern scientific form of an ancient project: that of constructing unified, coherent and universal accounts of reality. Such projects can be found within the origin stories of most human societies. But in the late 19thcentury, the universalistic project vanished within both the humanities and the sciences, as scholars in field after field coped with the modern tsunami of information by narrowing the scope of their research. The sciences began to return to larger and more universalistic perspectives from the middle of the 20th century as new unifying paradigms emerged in field after field, and physicists even began talking of ‘Grand Unified Theories’ of everything. New information and new dating techniques made it more reasonable than ever before to attempt scientifically grounded universal histories and such attempts began to reappear in the 1980s. But not until the first decade of the 21st century has that project really begun to take off. (2011 Abstract)

Cirkovic, Milan. The Astrobiological Landscape: Philosophical Foundations of the Study of Cosmic Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. The Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade and Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University, astrophysicist achieves an innovative overview upon the revolutionary sense of a fertile evolutionary abode for living, intelligent entities, now of a planetary scale. Again this vista results from an imperative reunion of animate and physical realms and principles. From the latest findings, an organic cosmos is seen to fill itself with friendly “habitable zones” from stars and galaxies onto a “Habitable Universe.” This astrobiology profligacy then infers an extension of natural selection to a “galactic Darwinism.” Altogether a neo-Copernican synthesis is presaged as living, developing systems found everywhere redefine a permissive multiverse. A synopsis appears in the International Journal of Astrobiology, search Branislav Vukotic and Cirkovic. But alas still no inkling of a greater reality and genesis that is growing forth on its ordained own.

Astrobiology is an expanding, interdisciplinary field investigating the origin, evolution and future of life in the universe. Tackling many of the foundational debates of the subject, from discussions of cosmological evolution to detailed reviews of common concepts such as the 'Rare Earth' hypothesis, this volume is the first systematic survey of the philosophical aspects and conundrums in the study of cosmic life. The author's exploration of the increasing number of cross-over problems highlights the relationship between astrobiology and cosmology and presents some of the challenges of multidisciplinary study. Modern physical theories dealing with the multiverse add a further dimension to the debate. (Publisher)

Thus the stage is set. In the remaining chapters, I shall try to muster support for the following tightly interrelated theses: 1. The relationship between cosmology and astrobiology is much deeper than it is usually assumed – besides a similarity in the historical model of development of these two disciplines, there is an increasing number of crossover problems and thematic areas that stem from considerations of Copernicanism and observation selection effects. 2. Such a crossover area is both visualized and heuristically strengthened by the introduction of the astrobiological landscape, describing complexity of life in the most general context. Modern physical theories dealing with the multiverse add an additional level of detail to what is orthodoxly perceived as astrobiological enterprise, encapsulated in the Archipelago of Habitability. 3. Even in its orthodox version, within the well-defined confines of the Milky Way, modern astrobiology offers the prospect of both foundational support and a vast extension of the domain of applicability of the Darwinian biological evolution. (22)

Fernando, Chrisantha, et al.. Selectionist and Evolutionary Approaches to Brain Function. Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience. 6/Art. 24, 2012. Reported more in Intelligent Evolution and Cerebral Form, with Eors Szathmary and Phil Husbands, another contribution that articulates the deep affinity of neural activities with life’s long iterative development. As Richard Watson, Hava Siegelmann, John Mayfield, Steven Frank, and increasing number contend, this achieves a 21st century appreciation of how “natural selection” actually applies. While a winnowing optimization toward “good enough to survive” goes on, the discovery of dynamic, learning-like, algorithms can now provide a prior genetic-like guidance.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4  Next