Posted by
Russell Standish on
Jan 25, 2005; 6:42pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Help-with-inheritence-tp519985p519986.html
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "Is there a complexity theory
of evolution without inheritance", but I know of no evolutionary
process studied in complex systems research that doesn't have
inheritance.
Consider an arbitrary irreversible process in a quantum multiverse
setting. Since quantum processes are reversible (unitary),
irreversibility comes about through the differentiation of the
observed "worlds". We have a process that is evolutionary by
Lewontin's 3 criteria:
1) Variation of succession states (through differentiation)
2) Selection (via observer selection, or "anthropic selection")
3) Inheritance (via continuity of the underlying quantum dynamics)
I have not attempted to analyse the case if the Many Worlds
Interpretation were not true, but being an "interpretation" it
shouldn't matter in some sense. So I'm lead to the conclusion that any
arbitrary irreversible process is "evolutionary", which by a curious
twist of fate was exactly what the term "evolution" meant pre-Darwin.
Cheers
On Tue, Jan 25, 2005 at 02:04:56PM -0700, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> Dear Friamers,
>
> Everything that you-all are having me read undermines the notion of natural selection. But it does so by undermining genetic inheritance, the idea that because of genetic material passed from parent to offspring, offspring will differentially resemble. I would have thought that of all the premises on which natural selection was based, the premise of family resemblance was the most secure. I have two questions, Does complexity have an alternative theory of inheritance? Does complexity have an evolutionary theory in which inheritance plays not significant part?
>
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