The Director of the Future of Life Research Centre- David Hunter Tow – forecasts a major surge in the creation of synthetic life forms and commercial applications following the announcement of the creation of the first artificial life form; but with an immense and irreversible impact on human evolution with the eventual emergence of Meta-life.
The first artificial life form has been created by human biological life. Humans have crossed the rubicon of creation by bypassing natural evolution and by designing the first artificial life form, have opened the floodgates of life’s evolutionary future.
Craig Venter and his team were the first scientists to sequence the human genome and have now created the first artificial life-form; a tiny new bacterium or synthetic cell, controlled by human engineered DNA, with its genetic instructions determined by human life.
The scientists have made a synthetic copy of the genome of a bacterium- Mycoplasma mycoides. This man-made genome was then transplanted into a related bacterium- Mycoplasma capricolum. This process “rebooted” the cell so that it was controlled by the synthetic genome, transforming it into another species. The cell has since divided more than a billion times.
The creation of this living organism is the culmination of 15 years of research, costing more than $47 million. But the cost is miniscule in comparison with its glittering potential benefits. It promises a new industry, generating synthetic bacteria capable of cleaning up pollution, producing new forms of green chemicals and fuels, capturing CO2 in designed algae and providing vaccines against disease.
The creation of life has been an ongoing human endeavour for at least 50 years, since Stanley Miller successfully synthesised amino acids, essential for the formation of proteins and life, using simple molecules such as water, ammonia and methane, exposed to an energy source such as ultraviolet radiation.
Since that time a number of paths have been taken by researchers to recreate the genesis of life including-
Resurrecting extinct species- such as the marsupial Tasmanian tiger and Woolly mammoth- extracting still viable DNA and implanting it in related species such as the Tasmanian devil and African elephant. But the notion of resurrecting Einstein or Shakespeare as present-day geniuses is highly doubtful, because evolution is not just a product of genes, but is a dance between genetics and the environment.
Re-engineering current species- reversing evolutionary changes and genetic switches to recreate the previous ancestor; for example producing teeth in chickens as birds related to ancient dinosaurs. The importance of this technique is that it demonstrates life as a continuum, with many of the genes from yeast and fruit flies still existing in modern humans.
Cloning new species- this can be achieved using the technique of hybrid speciation, which involves first mating two closely related species, such as single-cell yeasts. A small percentage of the offspring spontaneously clone themselves and some also change gender, thereby creating a new species of yeast.
The current artificial life-form has been created by manipulating of the code of life– the chemical bases needed to develop artificial chromosomes and therefore novel amino acids, proteins and life.
Producing new life-forms to order by designing novel DNA, is a comparatively recent process. It is a direct consequence of recent successes in sequencing DNA as well as the creation of component genome databases. This facilitates the assembly of genetic buuilding blocks into living systems in the same way that electronic components are combined to manufacture circuits and chips or software modules to create business services.
Flexible and reliable fabrication technology, together with standardised methods and design libraries have enabled a new generation of biological engineers to already create new organisms from biological components from the ground up, providing the basis for the new science of synthetic biology.
Molecular biology has previously largely been applied as a reductive science, but now synthetic biologists are building organic machines from interchangeable DNA parts that work inside living cells- deriving energy, processing information and reproducing.
Concurrently with developments in synthetic biology, another new form of life- Intelligent Software Agents, have been developed by computer scientists, representing artificial life in the form of adaptable evolutionary software programs. These are designed to provide autonomous and cooperative problem-solving support to humans through the application of artificial intelligence- primarily evolutionary, swarm and knowledge-based algorithms.
But the Holy Grail of life’s creation – evolving a living cell from scratch- has yet to be achieved. This is because many separate initial evolutionary processes have to take place first, including the evolution of- cell containment vesicles, an optimal genetic code such as DNA or RNA with the machinery to translate it into amino acids and proteins; the incredibly complex epigenetic processes providing signaling pathways from the cell’s environment and methods to fine tune its basic DNA; plus the machinery of cell replication, development, apoptosis and metabolism etc
In a sense Venter’s achievement has relied heavily on hijacking the machinery of existing cellular operation– much as Einstein did by borrowing Riemann’s mathematical framework for his theory of relativity. In other words he piggy-backed a free ride to life.
But this doesn’t detract in any way from the monumental human achievement in understanding better the enigma of life and creating it afresh in its full glory.
Because of this breakthrough it will now be possible to create not only new bacteria, but eventually the complete spectrum of new life-forms – plants and animals, including perhaps a new species of humans. In other words bringing artificial life from the super-natural to the human-natural realm of creation.
This glittering potential is balanced by unforeseeable risks; a synthetic bacterium With the capacity to mutate and proliferate outside the lab, doing untold damage to the environment by accelerating new disease pathogens and affecting the genetic blueprint of crops and animals including humans. It also will have the capability to be used as a biochemical weapon.
But science’s Pandora’s Box has been opened yet again. Now there are three players in the great game of life- biological, artificial and virtual.
All three will have to learn to co-exist and accommodate with each other; as over time the biological, technological and social barriers dissolve and they eventually merge into a new form- Meta-life.
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Saturday, May 22, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Evolutionary Convergence - The Future of Society
Director of The Future of Life Research Centre- David Hunter Tow, proposes that a process of evolutionary convergence is driving the complexity of society to a new level.
Recent research by a team of scientists from the University of Florida, has shown that insect colonies follow the same evolutionary “rules” as individuals; a finding that suggests insect societies operate like a single “superorganism” in terms of their physiology and life.
The researchers believe that the rules that guide social insect species and group behaviour may also have applicability to other species, including humans and human society.
David Tow postulates that a process of evolutionary convergence is a major driver governing this process.
Evolutionary convergence occurs when many critical feedback loops allow key knowledge-based processes such as computation and communication, to be optimised or reach convergence very quickly - eventually almost instantaneously from local to global and back to local again. At the same time new knowledge is generated, which continuously triggers change, feedback and problem solving on a continuously accelerated cycle. This has the capacity to create social complexity on a grand scale.
On the business and scientific front, global collaboration is now the norm, encompassing international networks of researchers, project alliances and commercial consortiums and involving diverse countries and cultures. Pluralist political, economic, trade, educational, cultural and environmental systems are also developing on a global basis including institutions such as the UN, WHO, UNESCO, EU, APEC, WTO, NATO, G20 etc. With increasing coverage and frequency of communication mediated by the Web, explosive growth in such social systems is already occurring.
This enmeshment process is now leading to a new phase in life's development, the realisation of a global human entity or intelligence. In other words, the same type of social Superorganism as emerges for insect species. According to Tow, such a global entity will eventually encompass all forms of human existence- biological, artificial and virtual.
Virtual communities will manifest in the form of groups of intelligent software agents- programs which cooperate to perform specific tasks and achieve goals. These are already being deployed within the cyberspace of the Web to solve communication and knowledge-based problems. Their current service capability includes locating, categorising, assessing, computing and negotiating information. More importantly however, they now have the capacity to learn, adapt, mutate and replicate- that is, to evolve in a primitive way.
Intelligent agents are only one example of the prototypes of virtual societies, with the eventual potential to evolve to a level of complexity similar to and symbiotic with our own. Eventually all such communities will merge with biological life throughout the universe. The evolution of society and civilisation, from the emergence of homo sapiens 200,000 years ago, to the sophisticated global society that we experience today will continue to be guided by this accelerating process, leading inevitably to the emergence of a global superorganism structure and intelligence.
The overriding outcome of evolutionary convergence ensures the continuing realisation of individual and social potential through the accumulation of knowledge and complexity. Enhancing the potential at the individual level expands the potential of the group, which in turn enhances the potential of society at large. Benefits at the societal and group level in turn feed back to each individual, so that knowledge gained at all levels is constantly recycled through a diffusion process. And so the cycle repeats endlessly, allowing life to continuously leverage its opportunities and extend its horizons.
This leads to an accelerating convergent process, where each increment of information gained catalyses the generation of all other elements, producing new knowledge at an accelerating rate. Concurrent with this process is the generation of meta-knowledge; a set of guiding principles which are continuously extracted from the base lode of information; designed to ensure that all knowledge contributes to the survival and the realisation of benefits for society at large.
These principles may be termed ethical codes, morality, human rights or principles of social justice. They include the set of modern democratic principles that encode the rights and responsibilities of the individual in relation to the group, such as equality under the law and freedom of speech. These become the rules that set the social and behavioural boundaries of human evolution, formulated through trial and error over eons.
The forces governing such historical outcomes according to this thesis are manifestations of the flow, exchange and refinement of information within a social context. Only at the local level is history therefore contingent. At the global level it is convergent, with the deep undercurrents of evolution guiding its progress.
Recent research by a team of scientists from the University of Florida, has shown that insect colonies follow the same evolutionary “rules” as individuals; a finding that suggests insect societies operate like a single “superorganism” in terms of their physiology and life.
The researchers believe that the rules that guide social insect species and group behaviour may also have applicability to other species, including humans and human society.
David Tow postulates that a process of evolutionary convergence is a major driver governing this process.
Evolutionary convergence occurs when many critical feedback loops allow key knowledge-based processes such as computation and communication, to be optimised or reach convergence very quickly - eventually almost instantaneously from local to global and back to local again. At the same time new knowledge is generated, which continuously triggers change, feedback and problem solving on a continuously accelerated cycle. This has the capacity to create social complexity on a grand scale.
On the business and scientific front, global collaboration is now the norm, encompassing international networks of researchers, project alliances and commercial consortiums and involving diverse countries and cultures. Pluralist political, economic, trade, educational, cultural and environmental systems are also developing on a global basis including institutions such as the UN, WHO, UNESCO, EU, APEC, WTO, NATO, G20 etc. With increasing coverage and frequency of communication mediated by the Web, explosive growth in such social systems is already occurring.
This enmeshment process is now leading to a new phase in life's development, the realisation of a global human entity or intelligence. In other words, the same type of social Superorganism as emerges for insect species. According to Tow, such a global entity will eventually encompass all forms of human existence- biological, artificial and virtual.
Virtual communities will manifest in the form of groups of intelligent software agents- programs which cooperate to perform specific tasks and achieve goals. These are already being deployed within the cyberspace of the Web to solve communication and knowledge-based problems. Their current service capability includes locating, categorising, assessing, computing and negotiating information. More importantly however, they now have the capacity to learn, adapt, mutate and replicate- that is, to evolve in a primitive way.
Intelligent agents are only one example of the prototypes of virtual societies, with the eventual potential to evolve to a level of complexity similar to and symbiotic with our own. Eventually all such communities will merge with biological life throughout the universe. The evolution of society and civilisation, from the emergence of homo sapiens 200,000 years ago, to the sophisticated global society that we experience today will continue to be guided by this accelerating process, leading inevitably to the emergence of a global superorganism structure and intelligence.
The overriding outcome of evolutionary convergence ensures the continuing realisation of individual and social potential through the accumulation of knowledge and complexity. Enhancing the potential at the individual level expands the potential of the group, which in turn enhances the potential of society at large. Benefits at the societal and group level in turn feed back to each individual, so that knowledge gained at all levels is constantly recycled through a diffusion process. And so the cycle repeats endlessly, allowing life to continuously leverage its opportunities and extend its horizons.
This leads to an accelerating convergent process, where each increment of information gained catalyses the generation of all other elements, producing new knowledge at an accelerating rate. Concurrent with this process is the generation of meta-knowledge; a set of guiding principles which are continuously extracted from the base lode of information; designed to ensure that all knowledge contributes to the survival and the realisation of benefits for society at large.
These principles may be termed ethical codes, morality, human rights or principles of social justice. They include the set of modern democratic principles that encode the rights and responsibilities of the individual in relation to the group, such as equality under the law and freedom of speech. These become the rules that set the social and behavioural boundaries of human evolution, formulated through trial and error over eons.
The forces governing such historical outcomes according to this thesis are manifestations of the flow, exchange and refinement of information within a social context. Only at the local level is history therefore contingent. At the global level it is convergent, with the deep undercurrents of evolution guiding its progress.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Evolution of Ethics
Evolution delivers social behavioural adaptations at the group level that benefit the greater good, producing ethical outcomes.
There is increasing recognition that evolution operates at the group as well as the individual level. Multilevel selection questions the sufficiency of an evolutionary theory that operates only at the genetic level. Darwin was aware of this problem and proposed that natural selection can operate at more than one level of the biological hierarchy. Natural selection at the group level explains many social behavioural adaptations that evolve for the greater good of the group- reducing group conflict, enhancing productivity and promoting more effective community structures.
Enhancing the potential of the individual through knowledge acquisition can therefore enhance the potential of the social group, which in turn feeds back to the individual or is transferred to other groups- benefiting all levels of a society in the process. Each piece of knowledge gained by the individual and group is recycled in some form within the entire life system. This process of cross-catalysis therefore leads to accelerated problem solution on a global scale, whether in response to pre-defined or self-organising goals.
In essence, collective behaviour can lead to group-level functions that resemble the behaviour of a single or super-organism, with capabilities far beyond that of the individual. This is now occurring at the human level via the global web at an accelerating rate.
The rate of acquisition of knowledge by groups is also largely independent of local social turmoil such as wars and conflict. It is instead dependent on the rate of exchange of information between a system and its environment and the capacity of the system to process that information and generate an appropriate response. Evolution is therefore a two-way street. However the morality of the evolutionary process itself is neutral.
History is replete with instances of 'barbaric hordes' overrunning more socially 'advanced' states, or of 'civilised' nations dominating more 'primitive' peoples. In both cases, the result is a transfer of information through the merging of cultures, technologies and social structures, allowing cross-fertilisation of one with the other. In many cases, the adjustment is painful and uneven, particularly for most indigenous cultures, with valuable knowledge either lost or suppressed.
Advances in computing and communications are now facilitating the transfer and generation of knowledge between cultures at breathtaking speed, resulting in the phenomena of evolutionary global convergence. This occurs when trillions of interactions and feedback loops at the information level allow processes to be optimised almost instantaneously at all levels of society, from local to global and back to local ad infinitum. At the same time, the new knowledge generated induces another round of opportunities to realise further potentiality gains.
This is the process driving life's future for better or worse.
But while cultural, economic and technological information is generated at a massive rate, another meta-process is at work; a secondary selection feedback loop, sifting and winnowing out the useful applications and guidelines required to ensure the most beneficial outcomes for life. This meta-knowledge can be categorised as ethics; a constraining influence, ensuring the survival of life in the face of a surfeit of potentially extraneous or lethal knowledge and capable of building a more just and equitable society.
The implications for our world of this evolutionary ethical selection process provides a more positive prognosis as we enter the next and most turbulent transition phase of civilisation’s future.
There is increasing recognition that evolution operates at the group as well as the individual level. Multilevel selection questions the sufficiency of an evolutionary theory that operates only at the genetic level. Darwin was aware of this problem and proposed that natural selection can operate at more than one level of the biological hierarchy. Natural selection at the group level explains many social behavioural adaptations that evolve for the greater good of the group- reducing group conflict, enhancing productivity and promoting more effective community structures.
Enhancing the potential of the individual through knowledge acquisition can therefore enhance the potential of the social group, which in turn feeds back to the individual or is transferred to other groups- benefiting all levels of a society in the process. Each piece of knowledge gained by the individual and group is recycled in some form within the entire life system. This process of cross-catalysis therefore leads to accelerated problem solution on a global scale, whether in response to pre-defined or self-organising goals.
In essence, collective behaviour can lead to group-level functions that resemble the behaviour of a single or super-organism, with capabilities far beyond that of the individual. This is now occurring at the human level via the global web at an accelerating rate.
The rate of acquisition of knowledge by groups is also largely independent of local social turmoil such as wars and conflict. It is instead dependent on the rate of exchange of information between a system and its environment and the capacity of the system to process that information and generate an appropriate response. Evolution is therefore a two-way street. However the morality of the evolutionary process itself is neutral.
History is replete with instances of 'barbaric hordes' overrunning more socially 'advanced' states, or of 'civilised' nations dominating more 'primitive' peoples. In both cases, the result is a transfer of information through the merging of cultures, technologies and social structures, allowing cross-fertilisation of one with the other. In many cases, the adjustment is painful and uneven, particularly for most indigenous cultures, with valuable knowledge either lost or suppressed.
Advances in computing and communications are now facilitating the transfer and generation of knowledge between cultures at breathtaking speed, resulting in the phenomena of evolutionary global convergence. This occurs when trillions of interactions and feedback loops at the information level allow processes to be optimised almost instantaneously at all levels of society, from local to global and back to local ad infinitum. At the same time, the new knowledge generated induces another round of opportunities to realise further potentiality gains.
This is the process driving life's future for better or worse.
But while cultural, economic and technological information is generated at a massive rate, another meta-process is at work; a secondary selection feedback loop, sifting and winnowing out the useful applications and guidelines required to ensure the most beneficial outcomes for life. This meta-knowledge can be categorised as ethics; a constraining influence, ensuring the survival of life in the face of a surfeit of potentially extraneous or lethal knowledge and capable of building a more just and equitable society.
The implications for our world of this evolutionary ethical selection process provides a more positive prognosis as we enter the next and most turbulent transition phase of civilisation’s future.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Evolution's Seamless Knowledge Web
Many scientists continue to postulate a territorial imperative over the evolutionary paradigm, reluctant to concede its applicability to a wider range of non-life processes.
This may stem from the fact that the first evolutionary model to be recognised and accepted by society at large was that applied to biological development. Although Darwin focused attention on evolution as it applied to all life, the broad concepts have been articulated by a number of philosophers both before and since Darwin's hypothesis.
As early as 500 BC, the master philosopher Lao-Tzu defined an all-encompassing phenomenon which he called the Tao or Way, as the dominant force shaping all aspects of nature and society. Today the Way could be re-interpreted as the all-pervasive force of evolution. By the start of the nineteenth century, evolutionary concepts had begun to receive broad philosophical acceptance. Scientific advances, particularly Newtonian physics and astronomy, also indicated an evolutionary advance in human knowledge.
By the twentieth century, it had become generally accepted that any realistic picture of the Universe had to be evolutionary. Philosophers such as Teilhard de Chardin, Henri Bergson, Friedrich Schelling, Alfred Whitehead and Samuel Alexander all developed the theme of an evolving, 'becoming', Universe rather than a static or nihilistic state of 'being'.
For Samuel Alexander, the pre-eminent Australian born philosopher, the fundamental entity was Space-Time, which he proposed engenders first Matter, then Life, next Mind and finally Deity in the form of emergent evolution; an evolving God which does not exist in the distant past, but comes into existence in the far future.
Today, every person has an innate understanding of evolving processes and systems applying the notion to all spheres of activity - political, economic, technological, psychological and cultural. However, the full majesty and power of the paradigm has still been largely unexplored. This is partly related to the massive rate of advance in all fields of human knowledge, forcing its partition into countless sub-disciplines, creating realms of ignorance between fields and reinforcing territorial behaviour within the professional and academic communities.
How many physicists, for example, have more than a fuzzy understanding of the social impact of investing billions of dollars in a super particle collider rather than cancer research? And how many economists comprehend even vaguely the cultural values of past civilisations or the ecological value of a rainforest?
But the current acute myopia of disconnections between social and scientific disciplines is slowly breaking down in the face of major intractable problems such as global warming, third-world poverty, over-population, loss of biodiversity and human rights violation. Solutions to problems of this global magnitude require the reintegration of dozens of knowledge domains involving the collaboration of many experts amplified by the large-scale computational resources of the Web.
Once knowledge is again perceived as a seamless web as in ancient times, the arguments that evolution is a random local phenomena or that it applies only to biological phenomena, will collapse. Biologists more than most should be aware of the holistic nature of life.
Certainly chaos theory teaches us that no event occurs just locally. Even the smallest perturbation generates ripples elsewhere in the Universe.
Blog link- http://thedarwinblog.blogspot.com
This may stem from the fact that the first evolutionary model to be recognised and accepted by society at large was that applied to biological development. Although Darwin focused attention on evolution as it applied to all life, the broad concepts have been articulated by a number of philosophers both before and since Darwin's hypothesis.
As early as 500 BC, the master philosopher Lao-Tzu defined an all-encompassing phenomenon which he called the Tao or Way, as the dominant force shaping all aspects of nature and society. Today the Way could be re-interpreted as the all-pervasive force of evolution. By the start of the nineteenth century, evolutionary concepts had begun to receive broad philosophical acceptance. Scientific advances, particularly Newtonian physics and astronomy, also indicated an evolutionary advance in human knowledge.
By the twentieth century, it had become generally accepted that any realistic picture of the Universe had to be evolutionary. Philosophers such as Teilhard de Chardin, Henri Bergson, Friedrich Schelling, Alfred Whitehead and Samuel Alexander all developed the theme of an evolving, 'becoming', Universe rather than a static or nihilistic state of 'being'.
For Samuel Alexander, the pre-eminent Australian born philosopher, the fundamental entity was Space-Time, which he proposed engenders first Matter, then Life, next Mind and finally Deity in the form of emergent evolution; an evolving God which does not exist in the distant past, but comes into existence in the far future.
Today, every person has an innate understanding of evolving processes and systems applying the notion to all spheres of activity - political, economic, technological, psychological and cultural. However, the full majesty and power of the paradigm has still been largely unexplored. This is partly related to the massive rate of advance in all fields of human knowledge, forcing its partition into countless sub-disciplines, creating realms of ignorance between fields and reinforcing territorial behaviour within the professional and academic communities.
How many physicists, for example, have more than a fuzzy understanding of the social impact of investing billions of dollars in a super particle collider rather than cancer research? And how many economists comprehend even vaguely the cultural values of past civilisations or the ecological value of a rainforest?
But the current acute myopia of disconnections between social and scientific disciplines is slowly breaking down in the face of major intractable problems such as global warming, third-world poverty, over-population, loss of biodiversity and human rights violation. Solutions to problems of this global magnitude require the reintegration of dozens of knowledge domains involving the collaboration of many experts amplified by the large-scale computational resources of the Web.
Once knowledge is again perceived as a seamless web as in ancient times, the arguments that evolution is a random local phenomena or that it applies only to biological phenomena, will collapse. Biologists more than most should be aware of the holistic nature of life.
Certainly chaos theory teaches us that no event occurs just locally. Even the smallest perturbation generates ripples elsewhere in the Universe.
Blog link- http://thedarwinblog.blogspot.com
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Future Darwinism- The Lamarckian Landscape
There is an elephant in the Darwinian room and that elephant is named ‘Lamarck’. The mechanisms of traditional evolutionary Darwinism are now being rewritten and in the process raise again the spectre of the Lamarckian paradigm.
This alternate route to evolutionary selection, initially pioneered by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in 1800, has much to offer science and civilisation.
Standard Darwinism places its adaptive bets on two processes- the recombination and mutation of genetic information. But the time taken to achieve adaptation in times of rapid change, such as today’s global warming, is just too slow to enable organisms to survive.
Nature has therefore taken a shortcut.
The search for the full majesty of the processes guiding evolution has dramatically advanced over the last decade, with an emerging understanding of the multilayered controls of gene expression and direct feedback from the wider environment. These complex intertwined multi-layered processes can be best understood in terms of networked patterns, invoking information, systems and graph theory. They have now exposed a whole new post Darwinian roadmap for researchers.
Accelerated adaptation is quite readily accepted in behavioural and cultural evolution. It is recognised that changes in the social landscape can provide almost immediate feedback to humans and institutions allowing them to flexibly and efficiently alter their responses to new situations.
The process of a frog needing to adapt to temperature rises in its traditional habitat, caused by global warming and GM needing to respond to consumer pressure for more fuel efficient cars, are in fact identical. They both depend on the system sensing information signals from its environment- natural or social- and then modifying its behaviour to best fit the environment’s demands; maximising the odds of its survival.
This is similar to the Lamarck’s thesis, which suggested that direct feedback from the environment could play an active role in altering an animal’s future genetic traits. But until recently the mechanisms enabling this type of fast track response were neither understood nor accepted by mainstream biologists.
The process of natural system evolution has evolved several biological mechanisms for fast tracking itself- via transposon editing and epigenetic inheritance.
Transposons are short sequences of DNA that contain their own promoters enabling them to position next to a host gene and alter its activity. This provides genomes with the capability to engineer themselves by moving around, cutting and pasting themselves into different parts of the genome and allowing evolution to proceed faster than by random mutation.
There are 13,000 human genes associated with transposons, including rapidly evolving genes such as those responsible for the immune system. Transposons can alter the course of evolution by altering the expression of genes and also the structure of proteins. For example, cells can produce either the altered protein or a normal backup, allowing evolutionary experimentation by shuffling the building blocks around.
The host organism is forced to build immunity to transposons in a competitive cycle, which drives increasing complexity. The spin-off may have been the evolution of the DNA methylation process to suppress transposons but also allow them to silence their own genes. This allows either maternal or paternal genes to be turned off in the developing embryo in a process known as imprinting. It also ensures that only one of two x chromosomes in females is active.
Epigenetic inheritance through gene silencing, provides a way for populations of animals to quickly adapt to their environment, creating a fast track supplement to Darwinian selection. There is also now evidence that epigenetic changes can pass from one generation of mammals to the next. Two genes in mice had been methylated and the offspring also had both genes methylated and switched off. A gene can therefore be defined by both its DNA sequence and epigenetic instructions or degree of methylation.
This also changes the debate relating to the insulation of sperm and egg genes from their external environment, which are not as isolated as previously thought. Normally the slate is wiped clean during egg and sperm formation and all epigenetic changes are reset. However it is possible that the methylation pattern on some genes does not get reset, so that the effect can be permanent. This explains how environmental impacts of cancer-causing agents such as pesticides can be passed on to three or four future generations.
This new Lamackian landscape is likely to be of profound significance to the understanding of life and the science of evolution; leading for example to the development of more powerful computer evolutionary algorithms and to the design of systems capable of self-reproduction and self-programming; delivering true artificial life and intelligence.
In the past biologists who proposed alternatives to traditional Darwinian mutation such as Paul Kammerer in the 1920s, were marked as frauds and heretics. Now it is seen that the two approaches to environmental adaptation and inheritance are in fact complementary, expanding on the power of Darwin’s original theory.
It is also a timely reminder, particularly in the year of Darwin, that our understanding of the mysteries of life are far from complete and that the creative research outsider still has much to offer.
This alternate route to evolutionary selection, initially pioneered by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in 1800, has much to offer science and civilisation.
Standard Darwinism places its adaptive bets on two processes- the recombination and mutation of genetic information. But the time taken to achieve adaptation in times of rapid change, such as today’s global warming, is just too slow to enable organisms to survive.
Nature has therefore taken a shortcut.
The search for the full majesty of the processes guiding evolution has dramatically advanced over the last decade, with an emerging understanding of the multilayered controls of gene expression and direct feedback from the wider environment. These complex intertwined multi-layered processes can be best understood in terms of networked patterns, invoking information, systems and graph theory. They have now exposed a whole new post Darwinian roadmap for researchers.
Accelerated adaptation is quite readily accepted in behavioural and cultural evolution. It is recognised that changes in the social landscape can provide almost immediate feedback to humans and institutions allowing them to flexibly and efficiently alter their responses to new situations.
The process of a frog needing to adapt to temperature rises in its traditional habitat, caused by global warming and GM needing to respond to consumer pressure for more fuel efficient cars, are in fact identical. They both depend on the system sensing information signals from its environment- natural or social- and then modifying its behaviour to best fit the environment’s demands; maximising the odds of its survival.
This is similar to the Lamarck’s thesis, which suggested that direct feedback from the environment could play an active role in altering an animal’s future genetic traits. But until recently the mechanisms enabling this type of fast track response were neither understood nor accepted by mainstream biologists.
The process of natural system evolution has evolved several biological mechanisms for fast tracking itself- via transposon editing and epigenetic inheritance.
Transposons are short sequences of DNA that contain their own promoters enabling them to position next to a host gene and alter its activity. This provides genomes with the capability to engineer themselves by moving around, cutting and pasting themselves into different parts of the genome and allowing evolution to proceed faster than by random mutation.
There are 13,000 human genes associated with transposons, including rapidly evolving genes such as those responsible for the immune system. Transposons can alter the course of evolution by altering the expression of genes and also the structure of proteins. For example, cells can produce either the altered protein or a normal backup, allowing evolutionary experimentation by shuffling the building blocks around.
The host organism is forced to build immunity to transposons in a competitive cycle, which drives increasing complexity. The spin-off may have been the evolution of the DNA methylation process to suppress transposons but also allow them to silence their own genes. This allows either maternal or paternal genes to be turned off in the developing embryo in a process known as imprinting. It also ensures that only one of two x chromosomes in females is active.
Epigenetic inheritance through gene silencing, provides a way for populations of animals to quickly adapt to their environment, creating a fast track supplement to Darwinian selection. There is also now evidence that epigenetic changes can pass from one generation of mammals to the next. Two genes in mice had been methylated and the offspring also had both genes methylated and switched off. A gene can therefore be defined by both its DNA sequence and epigenetic instructions or degree of methylation.
This also changes the debate relating to the insulation of sperm and egg genes from their external environment, which are not as isolated as previously thought. Normally the slate is wiped clean during egg and sperm formation and all epigenetic changes are reset. However it is possible that the methylation pattern on some genes does not get reset, so that the effect can be permanent. This explains how environmental impacts of cancer-causing agents such as pesticides can be passed on to three or four future generations.
This new Lamackian landscape is likely to be of profound significance to the understanding of life and the science of evolution; leading for example to the development of more powerful computer evolutionary algorithms and to the design of systems capable of self-reproduction and self-programming; delivering true artificial life and intelligence.
In the past biologists who proposed alternatives to traditional Darwinian mutation such as Paul Kammerer in the 1920s, were marked as frauds and heretics. Now it is seen that the two approaches to environmental adaptation and inheritance are in fact complementary, expanding on the power of Darwin’s original theory.
It is also a timely reminder, particularly in the year of Darwin, that our understanding of the mysteries of life are far from complete and that the creative research outsider still has much to offer.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Evolution of the Scientific Method
The scientific method is recognised as the primary knowledge generator of modern civilisation. Through the rigorous process of verification, applying both inductive and deductive logic, causal relationships governing physical phenomena are defined and tested in the form of models or hypotheses.
A new evolutionary twist can provide a deeper understanding the nature of the Scientific Method.
In fact it bears a striking similarity to the larger process of evolution itself and is a subset of that process. The difference is one of complexity and scope. Evolution is a universal generic process of adaptation and optimisation, which selects and amplifies the most appropriate response of a system to its environment. The scientific method is a meta-method or methodology aimed at selecting the most appropriate theory or causal model within an experimental environment.
But the two Tow believes are intimately connected. A greater understanding of the evolutionary nature of the scientific method will lead to an acceleration of the process of new theory discovery, which in turn will accelerate the broader process of evolutionary knowledge discovery.
The original conceptualisation of a hypothesis is often the result of pattern discovery based on intuition, creativity or serendipity. This initial hypothesis is then further experimentally tested and refined against sample data until its predictions can be accurately assessed in relation to real world phenomena and observations. If this matching process fails, the hypothesis will be discarded or radically reworked. If successful, it will continue to undergo verification, in relation to an ever-widening knowledge context.
Karl Popper proposed that all theories should be constantly tested and verified to see if a better theory can be achieved. This recognises that no hypothesis is a perfect formalisation or predictor of future reality. Popper's hypothesis therefore basically restates the evolutionary process.
There is no end to this process. All current major theories, even Relativity and the Standard Model of Quantum Physics, are constantly being optimised, refined and sometimes radically reinterpreted.
The knowledge and wisdom gained from trial and error processing for early hominids was initially passed on to future generations through behaviour mimicking, then by word of mouth after language developed and finally in the form of writing and symbol processing, which has continued through to the present time in a digital form.
At the same time a greater understanding of the cause and effect of natural phenomena emerged through the evolving knowledge structures of science, mathematics and logic. Finally the major scientific breakthroughs of the 17th Century, including Newton’s formulation of the laws of mechanics combined with the analytic machinery of calculus mathematics, provided insight into the underlying abstract mechanism at work- the scientific method. This was defined and applied by Newton, Bacon and others.
The key to better understanding the scientific method, is that it is not a single process but a number of sub-processes, which are continually evolving. These processes include- initial conceptual insights, general hypothesis formulation, experimental framework development, data access and capture, analysis of information and evidence extraction, hypothesis modelling based on inferencing logic, algorithmic formulation, experimentation, testing and validation of procedures, hypothesis optimisation and refinement.
Each of these sub-processes within the overall framework of the method is therefore evolving as scientific advances continue.
Over the centuries the tools for data capture, analysis and abstraction have also constantly evolved. For example, improved measurement tools and techniques have extended observational capabilities beyond the senses using the microscope, telescope, imaging equipment and mass spectrometry etc. Also advanced mathematical, statistical and graphical techniques are now routinely applied- amplified during the latter part of the 20th Century by the power of computer processing.
The scientific method was therefore not invented or discovered in its present form, but evolved and continues to evolve, using processes common to all adaptive learning.
A new evolutionary twist can provide a deeper understanding the nature of the Scientific Method.
In fact it bears a striking similarity to the larger process of evolution itself and is a subset of that process. The difference is one of complexity and scope. Evolution is a universal generic process of adaptation and optimisation, which selects and amplifies the most appropriate response of a system to its environment. The scientific method is a meta-method or methodology aimed at selecting the most appropriate theory or causal model within an experimental environment.
But the two Tow believes are intimately connected. A greater understanding of the evolutionary nature of the scientific method will lead to an acceleration of the process of new theory discovery, which in turn will accelerate the broader process of evolutionary knowledge discovery.
The original conceptualisation of a hypothesis is often the result of pattern discovery based on intuition, creativity or serendipity. This initial hypothesis is then further experimentally tested and refined against sample data until its predictions can be accurately assessed in relation to real world phenomena and observations. If this matching process fails, the hypothesis will be discarded or radically reworked. If successful, it will continue to undergo verification, in relation to an ever-widening knowledge context.
Karl Popper proposed that all theories should be constantly tested and verified to see if a better theory can be achieved. This recognises that no hypothesis is a perfect formalisation or predictor of future reality. Popper's hypothesis therefore basically restates the evolutionary process.
There is no end to this process. All current major theories, even Relativity and the Standard Model of Quantum Physics, are constantly being optimised, refined and sometimes radically reinterpreted.
The knowledge and wisdom gained from trial and error processing for early hominids was initially passed on to future generations through behaviour mimicking, then by word of mouth after language developed and finally in the form of writing and symbol processing, which has continued through to the present time in a digital form.
At the same time a greater understanding of the cause and effect of natural phenomena emerged through the evolving knowledge structures of science, mathematics and logic. Finally the major scientific breakthroughs of the 17th Century, including Newton’s formulation of the laws of mechanics combined with the analytic machinery of calculus mathematics, provided insight into the underlying abstract mechanism at work- the scientific method. This was defined and applied by Newton, Bacon and others.
The key to better understanding the scientific method, is that it is not a single process but a number of sub-processes, which are continually evolving. These processes include- initial conceptual insights, general hypothesis formulation, experimental framework development, data access and capture, analysis of information and evidence extraction, hypothesis modelling based on inferencing logic, algorithmic formulation, experimentation, testing and validation of procedures, hypothesis optimisation and refinement.
Each of these sub-processes within the overall framework of the method is therefore evolving as scientific advances continue.
Over the centuries the tools for data capture, analysis and abstraction have also constantly evolved. For example, improved measurement tools and techniques have extended observational capabilities beyond the senses using the microscope, telescope, imaging equipment and mass spectrometry etc. Also advanced mathematical, statistical and graphical techniques are now routinely applied- amplified during the latter part of the 20th Century by the power of computer processing.
The scientific method was therefore not invented or discovered in its present form, but evolved and continues to evolve, using processes common to all adaptive learning.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Future Darwinism- Evolution Wins- Life's Best bet
A previous story in the Future Darwinism series outlined a radical new theory that postulates evolution at the quantum level ( Ref- Quantum Darwinism)
However future directions in Darwinism point to a Unified Theory, which extends beyond biology to encompass all processes. This hypothesis can only be credible if evolution applies at the very large as well as smallest physical scale.
Modern theories of the genesis and dynamics of the universe have been in play since Fred Hoyle’s Steady State hypothesis in the 40’s and Big Bang theory of the 60’s.
However from the 90’s radical cosmic evolutionary models have taken centre stage; and now in an exciting twist, evolution and information theory have been combined.
Although the Big Bang explains the expansionary nature of the universe, it is limited in its ability to explain why the initial conditions were so appropriate to our particular life processes. When trying to draw conclusions about the nature of the universe, it is essential to be aware of the self-selection process resulting from being Homo sapiens.
This is known as the Anthropic principle. Our evolution and that of the stars and planets before us, is predicated on the properties of matter and forces necessary to create the finely balanced existence of carbon-based observers, such as ourselves.
Theories of the cosmos based on the Anthropic theory suggest that the type of universe we perceive is only special because of these specific properties and relationships. There may well be zillions of other alternate universes, of which ours is representative of only a tiny fraction within a larger multi-universe.
From an evolutionary perspective, André Linde, a Russian physicist, was first off the mark with his model of the ‘self-reproducing or chaotic inflationary universe’, formulated in the early nineties. Earlier versions of the initial hyper-expansion of the universe were based on inflationary theories which postulated a highly specialised event, fine-tuned to very special conditions.
Linde's model suggested that inflation might be a much more generic process, based on the existence of underlying potential energy fields, which manifest in the form of a gigantic bubble or expansion of space. These would continue to spawn new bubble universes or creation events in a never-ending self-reproducing process.
This model dictates that the inflationary field is self-perpetuating, constantly triggering new universes with slightly different initial conditions, creating different laws of nature or relationships between matter and energy, depending on the strength of the field; in much the same way as a fractal pattern creates self-similar forms over and over again.
The solution, according to Linde's theory, is that sooner or later out of all the trillions of possibilities, a universe is generated with just the right mix of force and matter fields to allow the possibility of life as we know it to emerge.
No sooner had the ramifications of this revolutionary proposal settled into the psyche of the scientific community than the next major conceptual leap forward in cosmological models was proposed by leading physicist Lee Smolin.
Our own universe would seem to be far from typical, much larger than expected from a Big Bang event. Why did inflation, an ultra-rapid stretching of space-time, continue as long as it did; precisely long enough to allow stars, planets and humans to evolve? A shorter burst would have caused a proto-universe to collapse. A longer burst would have spread matter too thinly for stars to form. Smolin instead proposed a truly evolutionary explanation based on black hole creation.
Only in the 80s was it realised that gravitational forces could cause our universe to eventually collapse into a singularity or tiny incompressible seed in a mirror image of its creation. At the same time, John Wheeler conjectured that black holes might generate new regions of space-time or white holes, with new parameters and these would be the seeds of new universes. In other words, it was also realised that the laws of relativity would allow material falling into a black hole in our four-dimensional space-time universe to re-emerge in another space-time set of dimensions as another Big Bang event.
Each singularity according to this theory, has its own set of space-time dimensions forming a bubble universe within a larger dimensional space-time- a meta-universe.
At its most basic level, Smolin's theory describes a universe that has evolved to maximise production of black holes and hence the production of alternate universes. The parameters that maximise the production of black holes also maximise the potential for the production of life through the generation of carbon molecules.
According to Smolin's theory, our universe constantly gives birth to new universes. With the right initial conditions, these will produce black holes more effectively, leaving more off-spring than other universes. In other words, they will be selected in the biological Darwinian sense according to the rules of mutation, selection and replication.
The revolutionary idea that Smolin has introduced is that each baby universe is a slightly mutated form of its parent, with slightly altered physical parameters. If these changes allow a slightly larger degree of inflation, this may kick-start a larger universe that does not collapse as quickly and which will eventually have the capacity to create stars, planets, carbon, life and even larger and more fecund universes.
Smolin’s evolutionary natural selection theory is of course the cosmological equivalent of Darwin's biological theory.
In biology a system attempts to adapt to its environment in order to survive. This is the driving force behind the process of evolution. Therefore as an evolutionary system it should also apply to our universe.
By evolving the capability to generate life, the universe has created the capacity to move beyond the state of inanimate matter to that of a living sentient entity, such as Gaia on a larger scale.
This evolving, ‘becoming’ view also answers some age-old problems such as why are things the way they are. Why is the universe in a state that just happens to support life?
Before the self-organising cosmic evolutionary thesis was developed, circumstantial evidence suggested that the physical constants of the universe were randomly generated. As previously discussed, the standard Anthropic hypothesis says that we exist in just one of an infinite or very large number of universes, each with its own constants and laws of nature; a small proportion of which are conducive to the creation of life as we know it.
The second alternative, Intelligent Design, suggests a supernatural force or deity has specifically designed our universe according to its own blueprint. This hypothesis carries no supporting scientific evidence.
Now Smolin’s evolutionary theory, together with a new information foundation, offers a third way of explaining our existence.
This theory proposes that the multiverse provides the environment that selects structures that provide the best opportunity for complex information processing; allowing sentient systems such as life to evolve over the long term.
In other words it selects flexible adaptive structures, capable of developing the requisite complexity for opportunistic systems such as life to flourish.
Biology could therefore determine the laws of physics and boost its own survival in the process.
However future directions in Darwinism point to a Unified Theory, which extends beyond biology to encompass all processes. This hypothesis can only be credible if evolution applies at the very large as well as smallest physical scale.
Modern theories of the genesis and dynamics of the universe have been in play since Fred Hoyle’s Steady State hypothesis in the 40’s and Big Bang theory of the 60’s.
However from the 90’s radical cosmic evolutionary models have taken centre stage; and now in an exciting twist, evolution and information theory have been combined.
Although the Big Bang explains the expansionary nature of the universe, it is limited in its ability to explain why the initial conditions were so appropriate to our particular life processes. When trying to draw conclusions about the nature of the universe, it is essential to be aware of the self-selection process resulting from being Homo sapiens.
This is known as the Anthropic principle. Our evolution and that of the stars and planets before us, is predicated on the properties of matter and forces necessary to create the finely balanced existence of carbon-based observers, such as ourselves.
Theories of the cosmos based on the Anthropic theory suggest that the type of universe we perceive is only special because of these specific properties and relationships. There may well be zillions of other alternate universes, of which ours is representative of only a tiny fraction within a larger multi-universe.
From an evolutionary perspective, André Linde, a Russian physicist, was first off the mark with his model of the ‘self-reproducing or chaotic inflationary universe’, formulated in the early nineties. Earlier versions of the initial hyper-expansion of the universe were based on inflationary theories which postulated a highly specialised event, fine-tuned to very special conditions.
Linde's model suggested that inflation might be a much more generic process, based on the existence of underlying potential energy fields, which manifest in the form of a gigantic bubble or expansion of space. These would continue to spawn new bubble universes or creation events in a never-ending self-reproducing process.
This model dictates that the inflationary field is self-perpetuating, constantly triggering new universes with slightly different initial conditions, creating different laws of nature or relationships between matter and energy, depending on the strength of the field; in much the same way as a fractal pattern creates self-similar forms over and over again.
The solution, according to Linde's theory, is that sooner or later out of all the trillions of possibilities, a universe is generated with just the right mix of force and matter fields to allow the possibility of life as we know it to emerge.
No sooner had the ramifications of this revolutionary proposal settled into the psyche of the scientific community than the next major conceptual leap forward in cosmological models was proposed by leading physicist Lee Smolin.
Our own universe would seem to be far from typical, much larger than expected from a Big Bang event. Why did inflation, an ultra-rapid stretching of space-time, continue as long as it did; precisely long enough to allow stars, planets and humans to evolve? A shorter burst would have caused a proto-universe to collapse. A longer burst would have spread matter too thinly for stars to form. Smolin instead proposed a truly evolutionary explanation based on black hole creation.
Only in the 80s was it realised that gravitational forces could cause our universe to eventually collapse into a singularity or tiny incompressible seed in a mirror image of its creation. At the same time, John Wheeler conjectured that black holes might generate new regions of space-time or white holes, with new parameters and these would be the seeds of new universes. In other words, it was also realised that the laws of relativity would allow material falling into a black hole in our four-dimensional space-time universe to re-emerge in another space-time set of dimensions as another Big Bang event.
Each singularity according to this theory, has its own set of space-time dimensions forming a bubble universe within a larger dimensional space-time- a meta-universe.
At its most basic level, Smolin's theory describes a universe that has evolved to maximise production of black holes and hence the production of alternate universes. The parameters that maximise the production of black holes also maximise the potential for the production of life through the generation of carbon molecules.
According to Smolin's theory, our universe constantly gives birth to new universes. With the right initial conditions, these will produce black holes more effectively, leaving more off-spring than other universes. In other words, they will be selected in the biological Darwinian sense according to the rules of mutation, selection and replication.
The revolutionary idea that Smolin has introduced is that each baby universe is a slightly mutated form of its parent, with slightly altered physical parameters. If these changes allow a slightly larger degree of inflation, this may kick-start a larger universe that does not collapse as quickly and which will eventually have the capacity to create stars, planets, carbon, life and even larger and more fecund universes.
Smolin’s evolutionary natural selection theory is of course the cosmological equivalent of Darwin's biological theory.
In biology a system attempts to adapt to its environment in order to survive. This is the driving force behind the process of evolution. Therefore as an evolutionary system it should also apply to our universe.
By evolving the capability to generate life, the universe has created the capacity to move beyond the state of inanimate matter to that of a living sentient entity, such as Gaia on a larger scale.
This evolving, ‘becoming’ view also answers some age-old problems such as why are things the way they are. Why is the universe in a state that just happens to support life?
Before the self-organising cosmic evolutionary thesis was developed, circumstantial evidence suggested that the physical constants of the universe were randomly generated. As previously discussed, the standard Anthropic hypothesis says that we exist in just one of an infinite or very large number of universes, each with its own constants and laws of nature; a small proportion of which are conducive to the creation of life as we know it.
The second alternative, Intelligent Design, suggests a supernatural force or deity has specifically designed our universe according to its own blueprint. This hypothesis carries no supporting scientific evidence.
Now Smolin’s evolutionary theory, together with a new information foundation, offers a third way of explaining our existence.
This theory proposes that the multiverse provides the environment that selects structures that provide the best opportunity for complex information processing; allowing sentient systems such as life to evolve over the long term.
In other words it selects flexible adaptive structures, capable of developing the requisite complexity for opportunistic systems such as life to flourish.
Biology could therefore determine the laws of physics and boost its own survival in the process.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Future Darwinism- Evolution Mark 2.0
A phase change in the evolutionary process- a second phase of Hyper-evolution appears inevitable.
As human society begins to achieve a deeper and more intimate understanding of the primary evolutionary imperative shaping its destiny, he predicts a new form of evolution will emerge, accelerating the already exponential pace of change to an extreme level- Evolution Mark 2.0.
The process will manifest in response to a deeper understanding by society of the implications of the evolutionary process itself. The resulting amplifying feedback will generate a glimpse of life’s true potential, accelerating the already massive momentum of evolution and resulting in a rate of change that is forecast to reach hyper-exponential levels in the near future.
If human civilisation is considered to be an information processing and learning system, then the major factors governing the rate of uptake of new knowledge are the capacity for integration into society’s institutions and cultural frameworks, together with the urgency or adaptive pressure of human survival needs.
The rapid drying of the forests four million tears ago produced great survival pressure on all species. But early hominids survived because of their cognitive, structural and social capacity to achieve bipedal locomotion, make crude tools and develop hunting and scavenging strategies consistent with a more open grassland environment.
The same imperatives apply to the capacity of modern humans to adapt to today’s major survival challenges such as global warming, ecological disasters, endemic conflict and economic collapse. Meeting these challenges involves active adaptation through problem solving – the heart of the evolutionary process.
Already an awareness of the pervasive and rapidly accelerating power of evolution is beginning to be felt through the enormous scientific, technological and social advances in our civilisation. This insight creates the evolutionary feedback loop- to actively engage evolution in helping meet today’s complex survival challenges. This further accelerates the knowledge discovery process, which in turn would generate further evolutionary insight and application.
A significant additional impetus would therefore be gained from a deeper understanding of the driving role of the evolutionary paradigm- a global awareness of the engine underlying life's progress. This would eventually create an explosive realisation of life’s future potential, as already debated by a number of eminent physicists, cosmologists and philosophers.
Such a state of hyper-evolution would lead inevitably to a more melioristic outcome for life through the acquisition and leverage of almost limitless knowledge and its by-product wisdom. The caveat that should be applied however relates to the resulting speedup of change, which would quickly reach a mind-numbing level.
As this rate increases to the point of incompatibility with the human capacity to absorb it, new social structures and modes of cognitive processing based on artificial intelligence techniques will emerge to help humans cope.
According to David Tow, this is already occurring. Even as the amount of information expands beyond human horizons, we are developing techniques to bring it under control. Like a fractal image, cybernetic life forms and intelligent machines are evolving in the same way as biological life- mutating to become increasingly intelligent. These act as proxies for humans, managing complex processes and roaming cyber-space- searching, filtering and processing data from an already overwhelming pool.
The unknown factor in this scenario is whether the level of hyper-evolution is capable of producing sudden and catastrophic regression. But optimistically, before this could engulf humanity, an adaptive process would kick in. Simulations would be performed allowing the critical threshold to be avoided until further techniques were developed to manage the potential risks.
Hyper-evolution can be expected to become a part of a new global paradigm within the next thirty years- 2040, based on current rates of knowledge growth and coinciding with the evolution of the super-intelligent Web 4.0. This will rapidly transform all aspects of our culture and civilisation, including accelerating acceptance of the global entity of meta-life, combining biological and artificial forms.
Also implicit in the notion of Evolution Mark 2.0 is the capacity of life to extract itself from the day-to-day pressure of a treadmill existence, finally becoming aware of its glittering potential- forever co-dependent on the evolutionary process.
Blog site- http://futureoflifeblog.blogspot.com
As human society begins to achieve a deeper and more intimate understanding of the primary evolutionary imperative shaping its destiny, he predicts a new form of evolution will emerge, accelerating the already exponential pace of change to an extreme level- Evolution Mark 2.0.
The process will manifest in response to a deeper understanding by society of the implications of the evolutionary process itself. The resulting amplifying feedback will generate a glimpse of life’s true potential, accelerating the already massive momentum of evolution and resulting in a rate of change that is forecast to reach hyper-exponential levels in the near future.
If human civilisation is considered to be an information processing and learning system, then the major factors governing the rate of uptake of new knowledge are the capacity for integration into society’s institutions and cultural frameworks, together with the urgency or adaptive pressure of human survival needs.
The rapid drying of the forests four million tears ago produced great survival pressure on all species. But early hominids survived because of their cognitive, structural and social capacity to achieve bipedal locomotion, make crude tools and develop hunting and scavenging strategies consistent with a more open grassland environment.
The same imperatives apply to the capacity of modern humans to adapt to today’s major survival challenges such as global warming, ecological disasters, endemic conflict and economic collapse. Meeting these challenges involves active adaptation through problem solving – the heart of the evolutionary process.
Already an awareness of the pervasive and rapidly accelerating power of evolution is beginning to be felt through the enormous scientific, technological and social advances in our civilisation. This insight creates the evolutionary feedback loop- to actively engage evolution in helping meet today’s complex survival challenges. This further accelerates the knowledge discovery process, which in turn would generate further evolutionary insight and application.
A significant additional impetus would therefore be gained from a deeper understanding of the driving role of the evolutionary paradigm- a global awareness of the engine underlying life's progress. This would eventually create an explosive realisation of life’s future potential, as already debated by a number of eminent physicists, cosmologists and philosophers.
Such a state of hyper-evolution would lead inevitably to a more melioristic outcome for life through the acquisition and leverage of almost limitless knowledge and its by-product wisdom. The caveat that should be applied however relates to the resulting speedup of change, which would quickly reach a mind-numbing level.
As this rate increases to the point of incompatibility with the human capacity to absorb it, new social structures and modes of cognitive processing based on artificial intelligence techniques will emerge to help humans cope.
According to David Tow, this is already occurring. Even as the amount of information expands beyond human horizons, we are developing techniques to bring it under control. Like a fractal image, cybernetic life forms and intelligent machines are evolving in the same way as biological life- mutating to become increasingly intelligent. These act as proxies for humans, managing complex processes and roaming cyber-space- searching, filtering and processing data from an already overwhelming pool.
The unknown factor in this scenario is whether the level of hyper-evolution is capable of producing sudden and catastrophic regression. But optimistically, before this could engulf humanity, an adaptive process would kick in. Simulations would be performed allowing the critical threshold to be avoided until further techniques were developed to manage the potential risks.
Hyper-evolution can be expected to become a part of a new global paradigm within the next thirty years- 2040, based on current rates of knowledge growth and coinciding with the evolution of the super-intelligent Web 4.0. This will rapidly transform all aspects of our culture and civilisation, including accelerating acceptance of the global entity of meta-life, combining biological and artificial forms.
Also implicit in the notion of Evolution Mark 2.0 is the capacity of life to extract itself from the day-to-day pressure of a treadmill existence, finally becoming aware of its glittering potential- forever co-dependent on the evolutionary process.
Blog site- http://futureoflifeblog.blogspot.com
Friday, June 19, 2009
Future Darwinism- Constructal Theory Unifies Evolution
A Unified Theory of Evolution is one step closer after a new theory- Constructal Theory, governing the adaptation of natural systems to the physics of physical flows, has provided further evidence of a link between the evolution of animate and inanimate phenomena.
Although the theory was first proposed over a decade ago it has only recently been fully published after becoming more widely understood and accepted by the biological sciences community.
In a paper published in the January, 2006 issue of the Journal of Experimental Biology, Duke University engineer Adrian Bejan and Penn State biology professor James Marden claimed that one simple theory can quantitatively explain important characteristics of animal movement. The method, Constructal Theory, was originally developed by Bejan to explain the shape of river basins but has since been applied to model a diverse array of natural phenomena involving flow patterns.
Constructal theory postulates that a system that is not in equilibrium will generate structural patterns and paths over time, that allow currents to flow with the optimum access and least resistance. The theory correctly predicts how an animal’s velocity, frequency of motion, and the force it applies to water, air or the earth varies with its mass.
Essentially the theory says that systems evolve so as to minimize friction and maximize their efficiency. In terms of locomotion, this means animals move in a way that minimizes their energy spent, independently of whether they swim, fly or run. All natural forms including animals, rivers, trees and even lungs, follow such an evolutionary process of maximization of flow access over time.
The Constructal Law is further postulated as a universal principle of evolution, which can be extended to many fields beyond biological systems, such as physics, economics and even cosmology.
It also supports the convergence principle of evolution discussed in a previous post. This states that if the tape of life is rerun, for example following a global catastrophe, species with similar structures and characteristics would evolve again in response to similar physical forces in their environments.
Although the theory was first proposed over a decade ago it has only recently been fully published after becoming more widely understood and accepted by the biological sciences community.
In a paper published in the January, 2006 issue of the Journal of Experimental Biology, Duke University engineer Adrian Bejan and Penn State biology professor James Marden claimed that one simple theory can quantitatively explain important characteristics of animal movement. The method, Constructal Theory, was originally developed by Bejan to explain the shape of river basins but has since been applied to model a diverse array of natural phenomena involving flow patterns.
Constructal theory postulates that a system that is not in equilibrium will generate structural patterns and paths over time, that allow currents to flow with the optimum access and least resistance. The theory correctly predicts how an animal’s velocity, frequency of motion, and the force it applies to water, air or the earth varies with its mass.
Essentially the theory says that systems evolve so as to minimize friction and maximize their efficiency. In terms of locomotion, this means animals move in a way that minimizes their energy spent, independently of whether they swim, fly or run. All natural forms including animals, rivers, trees and even lungs, follow such an evolutionary process of maximization of flow access over time.
The Constructal Law is further postulated as a universal principle of evolution, which can be extended to many fields beyond biological systems, such as physics, economics and even cosmology.
It also supports the convergence principle of evolution discussed in a previous post. This states that if the tape of life is rerun, for example following a global catastrophe, species with similar structures and characteristics would evolve again in response to similar physical forces in their environments.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Future Darwinism- Convergent or Contingent Evolution
A new discovery in red algae is challenging aspects of the conventional wisdom about plant evolution, at the same time producing another stunning example of the phenomena of ‘convergent’ evolution.
As land plants evolved from aquatic green algae, they needed a mechanism to seal in water and hold themselves upright under the force of gravity. This was achieved through the evolution of a tough polymer molecule- lignin.
Now there is strong evidence for the prior evolution of lignin in the cell walls of red algae– a common seaweed, which has evolved a flexible structure with lignin supporting its cell walls, enabling it to withstand the pummelling of waves. This occurred over a billion years ago, long before land plants evolved from green algae. It therefore appears the use of lignin evolved independently in these two algae in response to basically the same problem- overcoming environmental stress.
Evolutionary convergence postulates that similar forms and functions of life will evolve and converge over time in response to similar environmental pressures.
The alternative theory to ‘convergence’ has traditionally been 'contingency', championed by the late Stephen Jay Gould. This maintains that every species is the unique product of an unpredictable or chance chain of events. This suggests that if the ‘tape of life’ is rerun, the evolutionary outcomes or species that will emerge each time will be quite different.
In his book “Contingency and Convergence”, Simon Conway Morris challenges Gould's assertion that contingency is central to evolution and argues the case for convergence as the more compelling driver. The reality of convergence suggests that no matter how many times the tape of life is rerun, similar key outcomes will always emerge for organisms adapting to similar environmental pressures.
In fact convergent evolution has been tested a number of times by re-running the tape of life- that is tracing life's capacity to regenerate following past cataclysmic events, whether induced by asteroid impact or abrupt climatic change. Although each period of major stress has reduced the number of species by up to eighty-five percent, life has recovered and continued on its overall trajectory of increasing complexity, with sixty percent of species re-emerging over a period of less than several hundred thousand years.
For example, crinoids or sea lilies readapted and spread following extinction on two separate occasions; achieving a similar diverse range of anatomical forms within the same time frame. Also ungulates such as horses and deer, which diversified 50 million years ago only to be drastically reduced by climate change, again emerged in the same form 25 million years later.
Another striking example is deep sea bioluminescence. Fish have evolved a variety of visual pigments in order to detect the wavelengths emitted by marine life. Around 80 percent of marine organisms emit light at great depth. This ability has such a huge advantage that it has evolved perhaps as many as thirty times.
Also many fish have evolved yellow lenses to increase the contrast between blue-green bioluminescence and the background deep ocean illumination. More than ten different yellow pigments with completely unrelated biochemistries have now been detected, indicating the evolutionary capacity to solve the same problem independently an equivalent number of times.
The eye has also evolved many times and converged independently to two general classes of vision- binocular in mammals and compound lenses in insects. The form of wings has converged to a similar design as has the independent development of winged flight in birds, insects and bats, although separated in evolutionary time by hundreds of millions of years.
Convergence is at work in behavioural evolution as well. For example, both insects and frogs have evolved identical strategies and rules for mating song rituals, although vertebrates and invertebrates are separated by hundreds of millions of years. In more recent times, the development of early civilisation in the form of farming and building practices and the invention of writing and numbers, began spontaneously and independently in each of the major river deltas across the planet, in response to the end of the ice age.
Convergent evolution is therefore a powerful tool, not only for understanding the past, but for predicting the future. It provides compelling evidence that evolution acts as a powerful, independent force capable of overcoming the vagaries of history and chance.
It therefore provides hope that we can shape the world to be a better place for future generations.
As land plants evolved from aquatic green algae, they needed a mechanism to seal in water and hold themselves upright under the force of gravity. This was achieved through the evolution of a tough polymer molecule- lignin.
Now there is strong evidence for the prior evolution of lignin in the cell walls of red algae– a common seaweed, which has evolved a flexible structure with lignin supporting its cell walls, enabling it to withstand the pummelling of waves. This occurred over a billion years ago, long before land plants evolved from green algae. It therefore appears the use of lignin evolved independently in these two algae in response to basically the same problem- overcoming environmental stress.
Evolutionary convergence postulates that similar forms and functions of life will evolve and converge over time in response to similar environmental pressures.
The alternative theory to ‘convergence’ has traditionally been 'contingency', championed by the late Stephen Jay Gould. This maintains that every species is the unique product of an unpredictable or chance chain of events. This suggests that if the ‘tape of life’ is rerun, the evolutionary outcomes or species that will emerge each time will be quite different.
In his book “Contingency and Convergence”, Simon Conway Morris challenges Gould's assertion that contingency is central to evolution and argues the case for convergence as the more compelling driver. The reality of convergence suggests that no matter how many times the tape of life is rerun, similar key outcomes will always emerge for organisms adapting to similar environmental pressures.
In fact convergent evolution has been tested a number of times by re-running the tape of life- that is tracing life's capacity to regenerate following past cataclysmic events, whether induced by asteroid impact or abrupt climatic change. Although each period of major stress has reduced the number of species by up to eighty-five percent, life has recovered and continued on its overall trajectory of increasing complexity, with sixty percent of species re-emerging over a period of less than several hundred thousand years.
For example, crinoids or sea lilies readapted and spread following extinction on two separate occasions; achieving a similar diverse range of anatomical forms within the same time frame. Also ungulates such as horses and deer, which diversified 50 million years ago only to be drastically reduced by climate change, again emerged in the same form 25 million years later.
Another striking example is deep sea bioluminescence. Fish have evolved a variety of visual pigments in order to detect the wavelengths emitted by marine life. Around 80 percent of marine organisms emit light at great depth. This ability has such a huge advantage that it has evolved perhaps as many as thirty times.
Also many fish have evolved yellow lenses to increase the contrast between blue-green bioluminescence and the background deep ocean illumination. More than ten different yellow pigments with completely unrelated biochemistries have now been detected, indicating the evolutionary capacity to solve the same problem independently an equivalent number of times.
The eye has also evolved many times and converged independently to two general classes of vision- binocular in mammals and compound lenses in insects. The form of wings has converged to a similar design as has the independent development of winged flight in birds, insects and bats, although separated in evolutionary time by hundreds of millions of years.
Convergence is at work in behavioural evolution as well. For example, both insects and frogs have evolved identical strategies and rules for mating song rituals, although vertebrates and invertebrates are separated by hundreds of millions of years. In more recent times, the development of early civilisation in the form of farming and building practices and the invention of writing and numbers, began spontaneously and independently in each of the major river deltas across the planet, in response to the end of the ice age.
Convergent evolution is therefore a powerful tool, not only for understanding the past, but for predicting the future. It provides compelling evidence that evolution acts as a powerful, independent force capable of overcoming the vagaries of history and chance.
It therefore provides hope that we can shape the world to be a better place for future generations.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Future Darwinism- Group selection
There is a growing consensus among evolutionary biologists that the focus on the gene as the sole arbiter of the evolutionary process does not tell the whole story. In effect it leaves us blind to evolutionary processes at higher levels, particularly the role of the group as a major link in the evolutionary chain.
This traditional gene-centered paradigm is now being challenged.
Even at the basic biological level, genes rarely act alone. They operate in networks as groups of interacting genes, in which multiple genes affect each trait and each gene affects multiple traits. Such networks also have built-in redundancy, so that deleting any one gene has little impact on any animal’s form or function.
Overall therefore it is the genetic network that drives the selection process, not the individual gene.
One of the perplexing questions raised by evolutionary theory is how cooperative behaviour, came to exist. Organisms that cooperate should not last against freeloaders that don’t need to expend additional resources and therefore should die out.
There is a similar advantage for an ecologically diverse group of plants, offering more robust resistance against disease than monocultures. In fact whole species can also have traits that over time make them more likely to avoid extinction. This cannot be predicted from individual adaptations alone.
At the social level it is obvious that the cooperative strengths of groups will allow for better rates of survival. Co-operative behaviour is of advantage to all social groups for hunting, protection or food gathering, whether at the level of bacteria, insects or carnivores.
The altruism of sacrifice is also well documented, in the form of soldier ants defending their queen or human soldiers defending their families and nation. It is an evolutionary mechanism aimed at preserving group identity and proof that in the final analysis it is the continuation of the group or society that is vital, subsuming the individual's goals.
Social cohesiveness has also been an essential by-product of evolution. Human social groupings extend across a multiplicity of levels, including the biological family, extended family, friends, tribes, ethnic, professional and religious groups, communities and more recently groups based on common interests and commercial activities through the Internet.
The search for the full scope of the processes guiding evolution has been dramatically accelerated over the past decade, with a greater understanding of the multilayered controls of gene expression and direct feedback from the wider environment.
In the past biological processes and their components- genes, proteins and environmental factors, were analysed individually. Today they must be placed in a more holistic context. Regulatory genetic systems must be modelled and understood in their full complexity as dynamic flows of information, represented by mathematical models and computer simulations.
Game theory in biology also provides a holistic view of evolution and has be applied to conflict resolution, foraging, habitat selection and communication. It has also been applied to yeast genes as mentioned, bacteria, viruses, infectious agents and parasites, operating both in cooperation and conflict. A lack of cooperation in parasites for example can lead to maladapted levels of excessive virulence, harming both host and parasite
In this new paradigm, life arises as a self-organising process, without detailed blueprints, guided by patterns of interacting processes. Beyond the individual there is a new view of social groups as complex networks of self-organising systems, evolving group behaviour. Self-organisation in a social insect colony produces emergent properties such as multiple levels of social organisation, while dense networks of microbial colonies allow information to be distributed rapidly allowing them to respond efficiently and rapidly to environmental change.
Using all such tools drawn from network theory, game theory and artificial intelligence, we can expect to model increasingly complex biological systems in the future at all evolutionary levels- the single cell, composite organ, the whole individual and even populations of individuals.
It is worthwhile considering that increased knowledge of the interwoven genomes of humans and other species can help foster compassion for all life and reinforce the reality that all species are closely linked in a complex co-dependent web. This web of life must be carefully nurtured if we and our descendants are to survive on this small blue dot, in the vastness of the unknown universe.
This traditional gene-centered paradigm is now being challenged.
Even at the basic biological level, genes rarely act alone. They operate in networks as groups of interacting genes, in which multiple genes affect each trait and each gene affects multiple traits. Such networks also have built-in redundancy, so that deleting any one gene has little impact on any animal’s form or function.
Overall therefore it is the genetic network that drives the selection process, not the individual gene.
One of the perplexing questions raised by evolutionary theory is how cooperative behaviour, came to exist. Organisms that cooperate should not last against freeloaders that don’t need to expend additional resources and therefore should die out.
There is a similar advantage for an ecologically diverse group of plants, offering more robust resistance against disease than monocultures. In fact whole species can also have traits that over time make them more likely to avoid extinction. This cannot be predicted from individual adaptations alone.
At the social level it is obvious that the cooperative strengths of groups will allow for better rates of survival. Co-operative behaviour is of advantage to all social groups for hunting, protection or food gathering, whether at the level of bacteria, insects or carnivores.
The altruism of sacrifice is also well documented, in the form of soldier ants defending their queen or human soldiers defending their families and nation. It is an evolutionary mechanism aimed at preserving group identity and proof that in the final analysis it is the continuation of the group or society that is vital, subsuming the individual's goals.
Social cohesiveness has also been an essential by-product of evolution. Human social groupings extend across a multiplicity of levels, including the biological family, extended family, friends, tribes, ethnic, professional and religious groups, communities and more recently groups based on common interests and commercial activities through the Internet.
The search for the full scope of the processes guiding evolution has been dramatically accelerated over the past decade, with a greater understanding of the multilayered controls of gene expression and direct feedback from the wider environment.
In the past biological processes and their components- genes, proteins and environmental factors, were analysed individually. Today they must be placed in a more holistic context. Regulatory genetic systems must be modelled and understood in their full complexity as dynamic flows of information, represented by mathematical models and computer simulations.
Game theory in biology also provides a holistic view of evolution and has be applied to conflict resolution, foraging, habitat selection and communication. It has also been applied to yeast genes as mentioned, bacteria, viruses, infectious agents and parasites, operating both in cooperation and conflict. A lack of cooperation in parasites for example can lead to maladapted levels of excessive virulence, harming both host and parasite
In this new paradigm, life arises as a self-organising process, without detailed blueprints, guided by patterns of interacting processes. Beyond the individual there is a new view of social groups as complex networks of self-organising systems, evolving group behaviour. Self-organisation in a social insect colony produces emergent properties such as multiple levels of social organisation, while dense networks of microbial colonies allow information to be distributed rapidly allowing them to respond efficiently and rapidly to environmental change.
Using all such tools drawn from network theory, game theory and artificial intelligence, we can expect to model increasingly complex biological systems in the future at all evolutionary levels- the single cell, composite organ, the whole individual and even populations of individuals.
It is worthwhile considering that increased knowledge of the interwoven genomes of humans and other species can help foster compassion for all life and reinforce the reality that all species are closely linked in a complex co-dependent web. This web of life must be carefully nurtured if we and our descendants are to survive on this small blue dot, in the vastness of the unknown universe.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Future Darwinism- The Becoming Universe- Marx and Darwin
The Becoming Universe- Marx and Darwin
What did they have in common?
Ideas of general evolutionary development had been gestating for many years as biologists and naturalists observed the vast array of the adapted features of nature. It was only Darwin's monumental theory of natural selection that finally challenged the anthropocentric design arguments of the time. When the evolutionary paradigm arrived it led to a new interpretation of universal purpose in which natural phenomena evolve towards a final outcome, rather than being specifically designed by a creator.
Thomas Huxley, a co-founder of evolutionary theory, was one of the first to realise the wider implications of the evolutionary model. The laws of motion and energy conservation might he suggested, be examples of natural selection from a wider set of possibilities. In this conjecture, Huxley demonstrated great prescience. One line of cosmological reasoning today that is gaining increasing acceptance postulates that the laws and constants of nature may indeed vary over time and that our entire universe might be the result of a natural selection process, as postulated by eminent physicist Lee Smolin.
Evolutionary concepts were also starting to permeate the broad canvass of human history. Hegel, through his Philosophy of History in the 1820s, introduced the notion of understanding a subject by the unfolding of its history. He saw in history evidence of evolutionary progress expressed as a dialectic process of change.
This position is of central significance to a unified theory of evolution, as it demonstrates the notion of underlying structure in the chaos of past events. Hegel's dialectic was the foundation of Marx's communist philosophy supported by a conflict process between two opposing knowledge theses. The resulting clash of ideas produced a higher level of knowledge synthesis; a ‘becoming’ process which creates the essential mechanism for social progress.
In this notion of a dialectic, Hegel and Marx stumbled onto an essential element of the evolutionary process. Each interaction between a system and its environment generates new adaptive knowledge, generating a reaction which mutates and repeats until an optimal solution is reached.
This process of evolutionary tug-of-war between competing theories also results in a net gain in knowledge over time and is mirrored in the advances of philosophy itself; particularly in relation to the two great competing hypotheses of empiricism and rationalism.
It may be argued therefore, that all history is the outcome of the broader process of evolution, in which the underlying information flows drive all historical processes, resulting in continuously optimised outcomes for civilisation on a broad scale.
Each outcome ripples through the fabric of life, constantly changing the social landscape. Such a cumulative, multi-layered recursive process epitomises the essence of the evolutionary process.
Evolution in general does not have a specific teleology or goal, but is self-organising and dynamic. However it can be argued that an overall melioristic outcome can be discerned in the process, resulting in enhancement and refinement at every information level.
By the start of the 19th Century, evolutionary concepts had begun to dominate both philosophical and scientific thinking. The second law of thermodynamics known as the ‘heat death’, predicted the eventual extinction of life on earth and in the cosmos. This prognosis together with the collapse of traditional design theories under the impact of the Darwinian revolution, forced theologians to drastically modify traditional religious teleology, towards a more abstract view.
Philosophers such as Teilhard de Chardin interpreted the Darwinian evolutionary hypothesis in terms of an ultimately progressive cosmos, with a melioristic outcome for life, as opposed to the pessimistic heat death view. He predicted the ultimate evolution of an Omega point or omnipotent manifestation of the Christian God in the far future.
This represented a new view of human history; a view that clearly indicated an advance or progression in the knowledge and understanding of the world through the physics of Newton and biology of Darwin; a progressive humanity coupled to an evolutionary universe. The universe could therefore be seen as evolving towards some goal and in doing so could be construed as a teleological organism.
A number of eminent 19th and 20th century philosophers championed variations on the theme of evolutionary progress including Marx, Bergson, Alexander and Whitehead.
The Marxist theory of human development predicts the evolution of social systems from capitalist to socialist to an egalitarian society.
Henri Bergson, whose work marked him as the leading French philosopher of the 20th Century, based his philosophy on a becoming universe in which a changing reality always creates something new, driven by a non-physical life force- Evolution. He rejected the static ‘being' or ‘existence’ paradigm of philosophers such as Sartre, in which time is regarded as illusory or irrelevant.
Samuel Alexander, the greatest Australian-born philosopher, believed the fundamental entity was space-time, from which was created in sequence- matter, life, mind and finally Deity.
Alfred Whitehead was a mathematical physicist whose philosophy postulated the natural world to be a living organism, applied to both living and non-living entities. He believed every object including God to be composed of events in a process of becoming. He asserted that the laws of physics, together with the elementary particles, also would undergo change and that in the fullness of time all logical universes would exist. This thesis is gaining renewed support from the current ‘many worlds’ physical theory.
It can be seen that as such theoretical models of philosophy evolve. In progressing from a static to a dynamic view of the cosmos, they uncover evolutionary models of the processes of life and thought itself which then uncover other evolutionary insights, in a never ending process.
Evolution is therefore seen not as a linear process, but operates at multiple levels in non-linear fractal form. There exists a process of evolution within evolution, as in the Russian doll model. This is a vital characteristic of the evolutionary process, which is demonstrated time and again. It is applicable to all physical, social, scientific and religious processes. The evolution of new knowledge uncovers an evolutionary universe in all its aspects.
What did they have in common?
Ideas of general evolutionary development had been gestating for many years as biologists and naturalists observed the vast array of the adapted features of nature. It was only Darwin's monumental theory of natural selection that finally challenged the anthropocentric design arguments of the time. When the evolutionary paradigm arrived it led to a new interpretation of universal purpose in which natural phenomena evolve towards a final outcome, rather than being specifically designed by a creator.
Thomas Huxley, a co-founder of evolutionary theory, was one of the first to realise the wider implications of the evolutionary model. The laws of motion and energy conservation might he suggested, be examples of natural selection from a wider set of possibilities. In this conjecture, Huxley demonstrated great prescience. One line of cosmological reasoning today that is gaining increasing acceptance postulates that the laws and constants of nature may indeed vary over time and that our entire universe might be the result of a natural selection process, as postulated by eminent physicist Lee Smolin.
Evolutionary concepts were also starting to permeate the broad canvass of human history. Hegel, through his Philosophy of History in the 1820s, introduced the notion of understanding a subject by the unfolding of its history. He saw in history evidence of evolutionary progress expressed as a dialectic process of change.
This position is of central significance to a unified theory of evolution, as it demonstrates the notion of underlying structure in the chaos of past events. Hegel's dialectic was the foundation of Marx's communist philosophy supported by a conflict process between two opposing knowledge theses. The resulting clash of ideas produced a higher level of knowledge synthesis; a ‘becoming’ process which creates the essential mechanism for social progress.
In this notion of a dialectic, Hegel and Marx stumbled onto an essential element of the evolutionary process. Each interaction between a system and its environment generates new adaptive knowledge, generating a reaction which mutates and repeats until an optimal solution is reached.
This process of evolutionary tug-of-war between competing theories also results in a net gain in knowledge over time and is mirrored in the advances of philosophy itself; particularly in relation to the two great competing hypotheses of empiricism and rationalism.
It may be argued therefore, that all history is the outcome of the broader process of evolution, in which the underlying information flows drive all historical processes, resulting in continuously optimised outcomes for civilisation on a broad scale.
Each outcome ripples through the fabric of life, constantly changing the social landscape. Such a cumulative, multi-layered recursive process epitomises the essence of the evolutionary process.
Evolution in general does not have a specific teleology or goal, but is self-organising and dynamic. However it can be argued that an overall melioristic outcome can be discerned in the process, resulting in enhancement and refinement at every information level.
By the start of the 19th Century, evolutionary concepts had begun to dominate both philosophical and scientific thinking. The second law of thermodynamics known as the ‘heat death’, predicted the eventual extinction of life on earth and in the cosmos. This prognosis together with the collapse of traditional design theories under the impact of the Darwinian revolution, forced theologians to drastically modify traditional religious teleology, towards a more abstract view.
Philosophers such as Teilhard de Chardin interpreted the Darwinian evolutionary hypothesis in terms of an ultimately progressive cosmos, with a melioristic outcome for life, as opposed to the pessimistic heat death view. He predicted the ultimate evolution of an Omega point or omnipotent manifestation of the Christian God in the far future.
This represented a new view of human history; a view that clearly indicated an advance or progression in the knowledge and understanding of the world through the physics of Newton and biology of Darwin; a progressive humanity coupled to an evolutionary universe. The universe could therefore be seen as evolving towards some goal and in doing so could be construed as a teleological organism.
A number of eminent 19th and 20th century philosophers championed variations on the theme of evolutionary progress including Marx, Bergson, Alexander and Whitehead.
The Marxist theory of human development predicts the evolution of social systems from capitalist to socialist to an egalitarian society.
Henri Bergson, whose work marked him as the leading French philosopher of the 20th Century, based his philosophy on a becoming universe in which a changing reality always creates something new, driven by a non-physical life force- Evolution. He rejected the static ‘being' or ‘existence’ paradigm of philosophers such as Sartre, in which time is regarded as illusory or irrelevant.
Samuel Alexander, the greatest Australian-born philosopher, believed the fundamental entity was space-time, from which was created in sequence- matter, life, mind and finally Deity.
Alfred Whitehead was a mathematical physicist whose philosophy postulated the natural world to be a living organism, applied to both living and non-living entities. He believed every object including God to be composed of events in a process of becoming. He asserted that the laws of physics, together with the elementary particles, also would undergo change and that in the fullness of time all logical universes would exist. This thesis is gaining renewed support from the current ‘many worlds’ physical theory.
It can be seen that as such theoretical models of philosophy evolve. In progressing from a static to a dynamic view of the cosmos, they uncover evolutionary models of the processes of life and thought itself which then uncover other evolutionary insights, in a never ending process.
Evolution is therefore seen not as a linear process, but operates at multiple levels in non-linear fractal form. There exists a process of evolution within evolution, as in the Russian doll model. This is a vital characteristic of the evolutionary process, which is demonstrated time and again. It is applicable to all physical, social, scientific and religious processes. The evolution of new knowledge uncovers an evolutionary universe in all its aspects.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Future Darwinism- Towards an Information-based Theory of Evolution
The core of the Darwinian evolutionary process is the capacity of an organism to adapt to its environment. Living systems that adapt best are therefore more likely to survive and continue to adapt through ongoing recombination, mutation and replication.
But how do organisms know how to adjust to the optimum level of adaptation required by their environment? What is the process in the complex chain of cellular processing events that triggers the level of adjustment needed- for example to cope with a new food source or an increase in temperature?
The transmission of information from the environment to the organism, say in the form of a chemical signal, obviously plays a critical role in the process.
However we are more used to thinking about evolution in terms of natural selection for a wide range of physical traits. The idea that selection could depend on the level of information sensed about the state of the environment, takes us to a much deeper and more radical level.
Any organism, even as basic as a bacterium, that embodies some knowledge about its environment, is in a better position to exploit environmental resources and optimize its growth potential.
Each bacterium uses lac proteins to break down its food- the sugar lactose. Knowing how much lac protein it should produce to maximise its use of the available sugar in its environment provides it with a competitive edge over rival cells.
In recent experiments at Princeton University, physicist Professor William Bialek and his team provided the evidence for this critical link between life’s evolution and its capacity to access and interpret the information in its external environment, using the single cell bacterium E.coli as a test model.
Too much or too little protein production harms the organism's survival prospects. A bacterium that can calculate how much lac protein to produce to utilise available sugar in its environment will gain a survival advantage.
He calculated that bacteria storing one bit of information about production of the lac protein in their gene regulatory network, gives the cell the capacity to turn production of one protein on or off, which in turn provides a 5 per cent "fitness advantage" over bacteria storing no bits.
This suggests that there is an "information minimum" for life’s survival and that natural selection favours organisms that capture more bits of information about their environment.
This is a hugely significant finding, providing direct evidence to support the thesis that the process of evolution and adaptation is governed by the level of access to relevant information in an organism’s environment; and that this principle is common to all living systems.
It therefore provides a critical link in the chain of evidence supporting an ultimate information-based Theory of Evolution.
But how do organisms know how to adjust to the optimum level of adaptation required by their environment? What is the process in the complex chain of cellular processing events that triggers the level of adjustment needed- for example to cope with a new food source or an increase in temperature?
The transmission of information from the environment to the organism, say in the form of a chemical signal, obviously plays a critical role in the process.
However we are more used to thinking about evolution in terms of natural selection for a wide range of physical traits. The idea that selection could depend on the level of information sensed about the state of the environment, takes us to a much deeper and more radical level.
Any organism, even as basic as a bacterium, that embodies some knowledge about its environment, is in a better position to exploit environmental resources and optimize its growth potential.
Each bacterium uses lac proteins to break down its food- the sugar lactose. Knowing how much lac protein it should produce to maximise its use of the available sugar in its environment provides it with a competitive edge over rival cells.
In recent experiments at Princeton University, physicist Professor William Bialek and his team provided the evidence for this critical link between life’s evolution and its capacity to access and interpret the information in its external environment, using the single cell bacterium E.coli as a test model.
Too much or too little protein production harms the organism's survival prospects. A bacterium that can calculate how much lac protein to produce to utilise available sugar in its environment will gain a survival advantage.
He calculated that bacteria storing one bit of information about production of the lac protein in their gene regulatory network, gives the cell the capacity to turn production of one protein on or off, which in turn provides a 5 per cent "fitness advantage" over bacteria storing no bits.
This suggests that there is an "information minimum" for life’s survival and that natural selection favours organisms that capture more bits of information about their environment.
This is a hugely significant finding, providing direct evidence to support the thesis that the process of evolution and adaptation is governed by the level of access to relevant information in an organism’s environment; and that this principle is common to all living systems.
It therefore provides a critical link in the chain of evidence supporting an ultimate information-based Theory of Evolution.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Future Darwinism - The Future of Life - Foundations
Darwin's year in 2009 celebrates the 200th birthday of perhaps the most profound thinker of the modern era. It is also an appropriate time to explore the ramifications of the next stage in the Darwinian revolution.
The biological theory of evolution is undoubtedly the most powerful paradigm ever conceived by humans to explain their own existence. Since Darwin's epoch-making treatise, Origin of Species, published a hundred and fifty years ago in 1859, evolution has been centre-stage, universally recognised as the driving force in the emergence of all life, including modern humans, from the genesis of the first cells on this planet, almost 4 billion years ago.
However, despite its ubiquitous brilliance as the jewel in the crown of human intellectual achievement, the notion of Darwinian evolution has never been developed to its full potential. It remains instead largely constrained within its biological cradle, often limited in its everyday connotation to the lowest common denominator of 'survival of the fittest'.
The intention of this blog on the Future of Darwinism will be to explore and re-evaluate the future potential of the Darwinian model and to demonstrate that its current scope and application is only the tip of the intellectual iceberg.
By combining its formidable biological principles, including the immense field of genetics, with those of systems, network, quantum, complexity and information theory, it emerges as an incalculably deeper and richer model than previously contemplated.
The major thesis currently being explored in this blog as well as by a number of eminent researchers across the spectrum of the physical and social sciences, demonstrates that the evolutionary engine that drives biological development also drives all other dynamic adaptive processes at the physical, social, cognitive, economic, political and technological level and is in fact the major dynamic governing the Universe, past present and future.
It is further proposed to explore in future posts the social ramifications of recent developments in artificial intelligence and the computational power of the Internet, that mark the next crucial stage in human evolution; involving the inevitable symbiosis of vast computational intelligence with the power of the human mind.
These two 21st century conceptual goals - a universal all-encompassing Unified Theory of Evolution based on the original Darwinian model - coupled with the emancipation of human intelligence via the future Web, together provide a vastly more powerful paradigm for exploring the future of life and human potential.
The Future Darwinism blog therefore develops the foundations for extending Darwin's legacy of a Biological Theory of Evolution towards a verifiable Unified Theory of Evolution, ecompassing all processes of life and the universe.
It also summarises the author's original thesis published in 2006 - The Future of Life: Meta-Evolution- A Unified Theory of Evolution
available from Amazon.com and now updated in 2010 and soon to be available from Google Editions e-book store.
The biological theory of evolution is undoubtedly the most powerful paradigm ever conceived by humans to explain their own existence. Since Darwin's epoch-making treatise, Origin of Species, published a hundred and fifty years ago in 1859, evolution has been centre-stage, universally recognised as the driving force in the emergence of all life, including modern humans, from the genesis of the first cells on this planet, almost 4 billion years ago.
However, despite its ubiquitous brilliance as the jewel in the crown of human intellectual achievement, the notion of Darwinian evolution has never been developed to its full potential. It remains instead largely constrained within its biological cradle, often limited in its everyday connotation to the lowest common denominator of 'survival of the fittest'.
The intention of this blog on the Future of Darwinism will be to explore and re-evaluate the future potential of the Darwinian model and to demonstrate that its current scope and application is only the tip of the intellectual iceberg.
By combining its formidable biological principles, including the immense field of genetics, with those of systems, network, quantum, complexity and information theory, it emerges as an incalculably deeper and richer model than previously contemplated.
The major thesis currently being explored in this blog as well as by a number of eminent researchers across the spectrum of the physical and social sciences, demonstrates that the evolutionary engine that drives biological development also drives all other dynamic adaptive processes at the physical, social, cognitive, economic, political and technological level and is in fact the major dynamic governing the Universe, past present and future.
It is further proposed to explore in future posts the social ramifications of recent developments in artificial intelligence and the computational power of the Internet, that mark the next crucial stage in human evolution; involving the inevitable symbiosis of vast computational intelligence with the power of the human mind.
These two 21st century conceptual goals - a universal all-encompassing Unified Theory of Evolution based on the original Darwinian model - coupled with the emancipation of human intelligence via the future Web, together provide a vastly more powerful paradigm for exploring the future of life and human potential.
The Future Darwinism blog therefore develops the foundations for extending Darwin's legacy of a Biological Theory of Evolution towards a verifiable Unified Theory of Evolution, ecompassing all processes of life and the universe.
It also summarises the author's original thesis published in 2006 - The Future of Life: Meta-Evolution- A Unified Theory of Evolution
available from Amazon.com and now updated in 2010 and soon to be available from Google Editions e-book store.
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