Search Results (9)

This paper examines the extended evolutionary synthesis’s critique of the modern synthesis, and introduces the “survival of the luckiest” framework as a mediating perspective. This framework preserves the core principles of the modern synthesis, while incorporating an additional element of randomness arising from the interplay of natural and sexual selection. Although the extended synthesis emphasizes developmental processes, niche construction, epigenetic inheritance, and horizontal gene transfer, it also neglects the critical role of this additional randomness. By critically analyzing the evidence provided by proponents of the extended synthesis, we show that the survival of the luckiest framework offers compelling alternative explanations. In doing so, it bridges the modern synthesis with principles of self-organization and emergence, addressing key gaps while maintaining its foundational tenets. Full article

The article presents the synthesis of a multi-layer group control system for a marine autonomous surface vessel with the use of modern control theory methods. First, an evolutionary programming algorithm for determining the optimal route path was presented. Then the algorithms—dynamic programming with neural state constraints, ant colony, and neuro-phase safe control algorithms—were presented. LMI and predictive line-of-sight methods were used for optimal control. The direct control layer is implemented in multi-operations on the principle of switching. The results of the computer simulation of the algorithms were used to assess the quality control. Full article

The New Evolutionary Synthesis (NES) groups a series of theories that, departing from the gene-centric approach of Modern Synthesis evolutionary theory (MS), place the organism as the central agent of evolution. Two versions of NES, each one with advantages and disadvantages, can be distinguished in this regard; the restrictive NES and the comprehensive NES. Comparatively, the comprehensive NES is a more robust theoretical construction than the restrictive one because it comes grounded on a general, thermodynamically informed theory of living beings (something that the restrictive NES lacks). However, due to its strong teleological commitments, the comprehensive NES has serious problems fitting with modern science’s methodological framework; a problem that the restrictive version, with no explicit commitment to teleology, does not face. In this paper, we propose the autopoietic approach to evolution as a way of integrating these two versions of NES, combining the theoretical robustness of the comprehensive view with the methodological appropriateness of the restrictive one. The autopoietic approach, we show, offers a non-teleological, organism-centered theory of evolution, namely the natural drift theory (NDT), and a grounding on a thermodynamic theory of living beings, namely the embodied autopoietic theory (EAT). We conclude that, from the programmatic point of view, an autopoietic (NDT plus EAT) approach to evolution offers a promising way to develop the NES project. Full article

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is increasingly recognized as a complex metabolic disorder that manifests in genetically susceptible women following a range of negative exposures to nutritional and environmental factors related to contemporary lifestyle. The hypothesis that PCOS phenotypes are derived from a mismatch between ancient genetic survival mechanisms and modern lifestyle practices is supported by a diversity of research findings. The proposed evolutionary model of the pathogenesis of PCOS incorporates evidence related to evolutionary theory, genetic studies, in utero developmental epigenetic programming, transgenerational inheritance, metabolic features including insulin resistance, obesity and the apparent paradox of lean phenotypes, reproductive effects and subfertility, the impact of the microbiome and dysbiosis, endocrine-disrupting chemical exposure, and the influence of lifestyle factors such as poor-quality diet and physical inactivity. Based on these premises, the diverse lines of research are synthesized into a composite evolutionary model of the pathogenesis of PCOS. It is hoped that this model will assist clinicians and patients to understand the importance of lifestyle interventions in the prevention and management of PCOS and provide a conceptual framework for future research. It is appreciated that this theory represents a synthesis of the current evidence and that it is expected to evolve and change over time. Full article

Variation, adaptation, heredity and fitness, constraints and affordances, speciation, and extinction form the building blocks of the (Neo-)Darwinian research program, and several of these have been called “Darwinian principles”. Here, we suggest that caution should be taken in calling these principles Darwinian because of the important role played by reticulate evolutionary mechanisms and processes in also bringing about these phenomena. Reticulate mechanisms and processes include symbiosis, symbiogenesis, lateral gene transfer, infective heredity mediated by genetic and organismal mobility, and hybridization. Because the “Darwinian principles” are brought about by both vertical and reticulate evolutionary mechanisms and processes, they should be understood as foundational for a more pluralistic theory of evolution, one that surpasses the classic scope of the Modern and the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis. Reticulate evolution moreover demonstrates that what conventional (Neo-)Darwinian theories treat as intra-species features of evolution frequently involve reticulate interactions between organisms from very different taxonomic categories. Variation, adaptation, heredity and fitness, constraints and affordances, speciation, and extinction therefore cannot be understood as “traits” or “properties” of genes, organisms, species, or ecosystems because the phenomena are irreducible to specific units and levels of an evolutionary hierarchy. Instead, these general principles of evolution need to be understood as common goods that come about through interactions between different units and levels of evolutionary hierarchies, and they are exherent rather than inherent properties of individuals. Full article

As the prime unification of Darwinism and genetics, the Modern Synthesis continues to epitomize mainstay evolutionary theory. Many decades after its formulation, its anchor assumptions remain fixed: conflict between macro organic organisms and selection at that level represent the near totality of any evolutionary narrative. However, intervening research has revealed a less easily appraised cellular and microbial focus for eukaryotic existence. It is now established that all multicellular eukaryotic organisms are holobionts representing complex collaborations between the co-aligned microbiome of each eukaryote and its innate cells into extensive mixed cellular ecologies. Each of these ecological constituents has demonstrated faculties consistent with basal cognition. Consequently, an alternative hologenomic entanglement model is proposed with cognition at its center and conceptualized as Pervasive Information Fields within a quantum framework. Evolutionary development can then be reconsidered as being continuously based upon communication between self-referential constituencies reiterated at every scope and scale. Immunological reactions support and reinforce self-recognition juxtaposed against external environmental stresses. Full article

Two major obstacles hinder the application of evolutionary theory to the origin of eukaryotes. The first is more apparent than real—the endosymbiosis that led to the mitochondrion is often described as “non-Darwinian” because it deviates from the incremental evolution championed by the modern synthesis. Nevertheless, endosymbiosis can be accommodated by a multi-level generalization of evolutionary theory, which Darwin himself pioneered. The second obstacle is more serious—all of the major features of eukaryotes were likely present in the last eukaryotic common ancestor thus rendering comparative methods ineffective. In addition to a multi-level theory, the development of rigorous, sequence-based phylogenetic and comparative methods represents the greatest achievement of modern evolutionary theory. Nevertheless, the rapid evolution of major features in the eukaryotic stem group requires the consideration of an alternative framework. Such a framework, based on the contingent nature of these evolutionary events, is developed and illustrated with three examples: the putative intron proliferation leading to the nucleus and the cell cycle; conflict and cooperation in the origin of eukaryotic bioenergetics; and the inter-relationship between aerobic metabolism, sterol synthesis, membranes, and sex. The modern synthesis thus provides sufficient scope to develop an evolutionary framework to understand the origin of eukaryotes. Full article

This paper outlines a thermodynamic theory of biological evolution. Beginning with a brief summary of the parallel histories of the modern evolutionary synthesis and thermodynamics, we use four physical laws and processes (the first and second laws of thermodynamics, diffusion and the maximum entropy production principle) to frame the theory. Given that open systems such as ecosystems will move towards maximizing dispersal of energy, we expect biological diversity to increase towards a level, D_max, representing maximum entropic production (S_max). Based on this theory, we develop a mathematical model to predict diversity over the last 500 million years. This model combines diversification, post-extinction recovery and likelihood of discovery of the fossil record. We compare the output of this model with that of the observed fossil record. The model predicts that life diffuses into available energetic space (ecospace) towards a dynamic equilibrium, driven by increasing entropy within the genetic material. This dynamic equilibrium is punctured by extinction events, which are followed by restoration of D_max through diffusion into available ecospace. Finally we compare and contrast our thermodynamic theory with the MES in relation to a number of important characteristics of evolution (progress, evolutionary tempo, form versus function, biosphere architecture, competition and fitness). Full article

What makes Cybersemiotics different from other approaches attempting to produce a transdisciplinary theory of information, cognition and communication is its absolute naturalism, which forces us to view life, consciousness and cultural meaning all as a part of nature and evolution. It thus opposes a number of orthodoxies: 1. The physico-chemical scientific paradigm based on third person objective empirical knowledge and mathematical theory, but with no conceptions of experiental life, meaning and first person embodied consciousness and therefore meaningful linguistic intersubjectivity; 2. The biological and natural historical science approach understood as the combination of genetic evolutionary theory with an ecological and thermodynamic view based on the evolution of experiental living systems as the ground fact and engaged in a search for empirical truth, yet doing so without a theory of meaning and first person embodied consciousness and thereby linguistic meaningful intersubjectivity; 3. The linguistic-cultural-social structuralist constructivism that sees all knowledge as constructions of meaning produced by the intersubjective web of language, cultural mentality and power, but with no concept of empirical truth, life, evolution, ecology and a very weak concept of subjective embodied first person consciousness even while taking conscious intersubjective communication and knowledge processes as the basic fact to study (the linguistic turn); 4. Any approach which takes the qualitative distinction between subject and object as the ground fact, on which all meaningful knowledge is based, considering all result of the sciences including linguistics and embodiment of consciousness as secondary knowledge, as opposed to a phenomenological (Husserl) or actually phaneroscopic (Peirce) first person point of view considering conscious meaningful experiences in advance of the subject/object distinction. The phaneroscopic semiotics includes an intersubjective base as Peirce considers all knowledge as intersubjectively produced through signs and view emotions and qualia as Firstness. The integrative transdisciplinary synthesis of Cybersemiotics starts by accepting two major, but not fully explanatory, and very different transdisciplinary paradigms: 1. The second order cybernetic and autopoietic approach united in Luhmann’s triple autopoietic system theory of social communication; 2. The Peircean phaneroscopic, triadic, pragmaticistic, evolutionary, semiotic approach to meaning, which has led to modern biosemiotics, based in a phenomenological intersubjective world of partly self-organizing triadic sign processes in an experiental meaningful world. The two are integrated by inserting the modern development of information theory and self-organizing emergent chemico-biological phenomena as an aspect of a general semiotic evolution in the Peircean framework. This creates the Cybersemiotic framework, where evolutionary experiental and intersubjective sign processes become the ground reality, on which our conceptions of ourselves, action, meaning and the word are built. None of the results from exact science, biology, humanities or social sciences are considered more fundamental than the others. They contribute on an equal footing to our intersubjective semiotics knowing process of ourselves and the world Full article