Computer simulation of biological evolution are largely determined by the objective.
What is the evolution searching for? Does it try to increase the biomass of the system? Does it try to increase the complexity of biological structures? Nothing at all? Just follow its own rules. And if so, are these rules the only possible or are they just contingent?
Hi Federico,
I suggest you read this very interesting article by Dr. Karo Michaelian:
http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/16/2629/2012/hess-16-2629-2012.pdf
It seems that the ultimate goal of biological evolution is "increasing the global entropy production of the Earth in its interaction with the solar environment". Hope you like the article. Regards, Alex
Evolution is a process that has no goal or aim. It's not a teleological process.
When we run a simulation with a determined goal, it's our aim, not evolution's that is being pursued.
Aleksandar suggestion is confusing an a posteriori observation with an a priori goal. It is like saying that the goal of evolution is produce biodiversity. Simply wrong.
Agree with Daniel. Evolutionary theory is of the very few fantastic theories ever developed that is non-teleological. In fact, Darwin's book (1859) was once put into the Roman Index - i.e. as a forbidden book, precisely because it explains life without any teleological cause.
As a matter of fact, if you allow me to go a bit farther, why on earth do we need a teleology - at all? Certainly most theories are and have, indeed, been teleological.
Now, the framework wherein the question is posed is complexity theory. Well, voilà one more reason to step aside from that teleological burden.
Life's fitness consists simply in being or becoming as fittest as possible, at every single moment or circumstance, period.
Hi,
Thanks for your quick response. :-)
I agree with your considerations. Alexsandar's article I think it is very useful to see the role of life in the cosmic evolution of Chaisson ( https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~ejchaisson/cosmic_evolution/docs/splash.html ).
An article that I found very interesting is Bejan and Lorente (2011) The constructal law and the evolution of design in nature ( http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1571064511000509# )
Yes, I am also against teleological arguments, especially in the religious sense, and I am definitely opposed to the view that evolution is guided by the "invisible hand of god". But the 2nd law of thermodynamics does have some kind of directionality (maximum entropy) and I don't think that living beings as physical processes can escape that directionality. I certainly hope that they are able to because this law otherwise paints very dark picture for the faith of our universe - heat death of the universe.
Aleksander. You can edit yor answer puting the mouse in the upper corner ;-)
Indeed evolution is deifnitely not teleological. Following the aforementioned threads, I am with the opinion that evolution can be framed by complexity theory which looks at phenomena from an open system's perspective with the inevitable consequence of emegent behaviour and interactive causality.
To answer the question above, I would say that evolution does not have an aim as such, but that it is a natural occurence that results from the complex interactions with the environment. This is not to say that evolution can always lead to more of something. There are cases where it may lead to decay under certain environmental conditions, i.e, The extinction of certain species in fauna or flora.
Evolution, despite its usual concept in living organisms( systems), posses a more general definition in all physical systems. For both definitions, evolution refers to the system changes through passing time (physical view) or through successive generations of a species (living organisms). Although the evolution of a system, in physics, generally could be derived by the act of evolution operator ( Hamiltonian, time derivative etc) on the state function (e.g. Schrodinger wave, Density matrix, etc.) , however in living systems it appears as the changes in the Genomes, carrying out by DNA and related nucleic acids (i.e. A,C,T,G).
With these introduction, we can roughly say that the aim of evolution is selection of the survival systems through the time arrow, This selection could be done by generating the more compatible phenotypes of each species that posses more compatible characteristics for surviving in natural environment. More compatible generations of living systems originated from mutations of genes and consequently DNA. Therefore it seems rational that for a Simulation of evolution of living bodies, the main problem will be to determine the probability of good gene presentation which guarantees the survival of the species and its reproduction. Briefly the aim is survival. Simulation of DNA evolution and related genomes may be worked out by the same laws of physical evolution in the quantum level states, by definition of a suitable density matrix to describe mixed states of the whole system.
Dear friends, I dare suggest reading or taking a look at E. Chaisson' s book (2001) or papers.
Chaisson makes it clear that evolution is not only relevant to living beings, bit also to the universe as a whole. Physical, biological and cultural systems do evolve.
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