Chapter 4

Evolution

In contrast to the apparent immutability of the inanimate world, with its classical

paradigm of unchanging physical laws which, after setting the initial conditions,

predictably govern events unendingly into the future, the animate world evidently

is full of change. A bridge between the two was created by complex chemical sys-

tems such as the Belousov–Zhabotinski reaction, ¹ or the chlorite–iodide reaction. ²

Considering evolution as “invadability”, systems are modified through invasion by

elements not hitherto present: they are either rejected or assimilated, in the latter

case irrevocably modifying the system. Hence predictability is impossible. In the

Belousov–Zhabotinski reaction, or biological or social systems, energy flows and

material balance can be tracked, but they only indicate structures that have appeared

so far and do not explain them, nor can they predict the emergence of some new

structure. In reality, instabilities are traversed and qualitatively different structures

may emerge; symmetry is not conserved. We have noted in Chap. 2 how the ampli-

fication of information in the microscopic scales (in effect noise) up to macroscopic

scales is one way in which new information can be created in the latter; the Lyapunov

exponent is a useful parameter for keeping track of the process. Schneider (2000b)

has investigated what is in effect an example of this phenomenon in the evolution of

nucleotide binding sites. ³

1 See Allen (2007) for a comprehensive discussion.

2 Nagypál and Epstein (1988).

3 See also Schneider (2000a).

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J. Ramsden, Bioinformatics, Computational Biology,

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45607-8_4

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