(this is a letter to John smart that bounced… but I like)
John, I’m very interested in your Evo-Devl Universe project. http://evodevouniverse.com/wiki/index.php/Project
There are some interesting examples of development, that operate by multi-level selection, even a very nice clear example for a case of punctuated equilibrium in a little plankton species. The math is a little different, diagnostic math not deterministic math. The theory is a little different, about systems as independent learning processes. But the big idea that the universe is doing what life is doing, fits very well.
Paper- http://www.synapse9.com/GTRevis-2007.pdf
The question of whether the universe is a learning system, like biological systems are and lots else, is just the kind of question my “physics of happening” is designed to point to evidence of. I found a really good way to do it, stemming from a link between the conservation laws, and the conflicting evidence of universal continuity in energy flows and discontinuity in events of beginning and ending. The theorem that exposes the key question helps validate a rather effective new method of exploring independently organized systems and their development processes, without manipulating them…! www.synapse9.com/drtheo.pdf
What you see at the left is clear evidence of developmental bursts of continuous evolutionary development spanning a half million years.
Phil Henshaw
fyi, Below, is a statement of what seems implied for the mechanism of multi-level selection in the genome that would allow this. A friend found it better than some of my prior ones and passed on your name.
—-Devo-Evo?
Finding developmental processes in evolution is not so shocking, if it’s an extension of how organisms themselves develop. Growth is a developmental process, not a random selection process. The developmental map, the first role of the genetic code, charts a developmental path. The question would be, how can genetic evolution alter the developmental path as a way of altering the organism that develops? Somehow the genome serves to prompt a set of branching paths of developmental processes throughout a developing organism, and to then coordinate the limits they come to in maturity. Such a record of coordinated branching developmental paths would then be seen as what guides development. If so, might it not also suggest that the functional variations of the genome could primarily occur by extending and adjusting the developmental path? Then the genome could be self-healing except near the extremities of the developmental paths it leads, and so perhaps solve several of the puzzles of rapid coordinated multi-level evolution at one time. The larger implication though, what makes it actually plausible, is this would then make mutation not random, but accumulative, local and branching. It could occur on all branches at once, preferentially. What really got my attention was realizing that this would make multiplying variation *AT the point of successful variation* the rule. That would make genetic variation an active environmental exploration process. Branching would then explore the environment of potentials in something of the same manner as earth worms or ants probe around in finding a path. Successful variation is then followed by multiple variations on it and extending from it. That solves other major problems like complex co-evolutions. That mutation could be *path finding* and essentially exploratory in the environment would then be expected to show up in the data as evolutionary change in growth spurts, as is clearly shown for G. tumida, and always implied by the evidence of punctuated equilibrium.
Does a system design allowing rapid whole system variation in coordination with its environment fit the pattern of punctuated equilibrium? I think it provides the one big thing missing from every other theory. It allows for divergence followed by exploration and then maturation, breaking from and remaking a stable form. Would you then need to treat both mutation and selection as one interactive process and as one transient dynamic event, a single ‘thought’ of combined organism/environment learning? It takes a little getting used to, but it’s tempting. The final and perhaps best piece, the ‘coupe de gras’, is you don’t need to exlude the other kinds of evolutionary processes. They can all still operate, in tandem. Thus, I think, all the big missing pieces are covered and no new ones created! - pfh – I have good piece in Cosmos & History giving an overview of how to identify and investigate natural systems that ‘think for themselves’ in this way, starting from one, curious bit of evidence that often points to them, systems that seem to follow global rules where there is no physical means for the rule to be stored or followed! That may sometimes point to where independent learning systems have learned to do on their own. http://www.cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/view/200/259