Evolution by Self-replications

The diversity of forms evolved around mating behaviour seems to be denied by the urge for efficiency stemming from natural selection. It seems that noone knows for sure why a peacock has a long tail or why a male deer carries antlers. The choice made by the female proposed as an explanation lacks a logical cause  ⁽²⁾  

While the contemporary theory explains that these forms does not contradict the natural selection mechanism, the true cause why they generally appear is still not well explained. Arguments why the female makeing it's choice interprets males diffeomorphism as the power and not as weakness are at least not stright forward.

and neither do the gene drift nor the sexual selection alone explain why these appearences are so strong and important in many species. Also the homosexuality belongs to this cathegory  ⁽³⁾  

Authors relying on ToE suggest to explain homosexuality with the benefit provided by the common upbringing children. Yet this argument explains only the friendship and not the erotic charm.

The fossil records suggest long periods without significant changes in the evolution of species divided by vivid developements, which take place suddenly and in which new species appear. Changes in the environment (e.g. climat) have been proposed as a cause for these "jumps", but a true link has never been demonstrated.  ⁽⁴⁾  

The stratigraphic convention naming periods in the earth history with eons: precambrian, phanerozoic, cenozoic, and their subdivisions has been chosen in the way which denotes discontinuities in fossil records, some of which point on huge overall changes in the whole biosphere. Yet the temperature and sea level diagrams are often continuous on the borders between these periods: (source) see also geological temeperature record Only the perm mass extinction 252 mln years ago (90% of species die out) is due to the above diagram acompanied by a temperature jump, but even in this case some scientists suspect biological causes. Surely biological i physical causes are not only interwoben, but the ratio of temperature jump might be important in each specific case too. Supposed discontinuities in biological forms might on the other hand reflect rather the limited number of records we have than the true jumps, as some argue. Therefore the above argumentation is only a vague sketch. Nevertheless no correlation between jumps of evolution and the clima is as evident as it could be. The idea due to which some developements occured rapidely and without obvious outer casues when compared with longer stabile periods between them is well established, and it seems to be not sufficiently covered by ToE.

It is ofter argued that the evolution can due to ToE only take place when it's subject (here the DNA-machinery) already exists. Yet why did the DNA-machinery emerged at all ? Appearing of some primary chemical cycles  ⁽⁵⁾  

see Hypercycles by Manfred Eigen

does not seem to be explained by ToE in convincing way. Scientists are still disputing the question if it was a rare, random event or actual necessity that lead to the creation of DNA.

Accepting the natural selection as a main mechanism of evolution promotes a competition paradigma with which the main task of an individial organism appears to be to compete with other organisms for limited ressources. This view appeared so obvious, that it has never been justified with hard data. Thus it remains not clear if this view is rooted in the biological data or rather in the paradigma itself. The competition model causes also paradoxes, two of which I list below:

The question why cooperation behaviours exist (see also "althruism") has beed widly discussed. It has been tried to justify the "althruism" with competition between groups. Truely some groups may winn the competition with other groups if some of their indivduals show althruistic behaviour. Yet some authors argued that this explanation is not sufficient. It is well possible that the controversy stem from a false paradigma and not from the nature itself.  (6)     As an example an anthill could winn against other anthills if it's ants cooperate or even offer their life to defend it. Yet anthills seem rarely compete between each other this way. An anthill of non-cooperative ants could find enougth ressources in the forest, yet it'll dissolve on other reasons. The last idea is pointing to quite another way of thinking than "competition".   If the main task of an organism is to compete with others why don't a single organism evolved in each environment, which eliminated competitors ? Truely we need many to compete, but as the mechanism begins to work a one individual could be the result. A mechanism limiting competition and always allowing many to survive must exist, which has yet not been identified properly in the theory.

The human culture obiously does evolve. The mechanism based on natural selection proposed by ToE should in principle be applicable also to the evolution of a human culture, of social and economic systems, etc., but ToE seems to fail to explain these processes sufficently. There seem to be no specie competiting with humans, which could cause a natural selection strong enough to promote the emergence of human language due to the standard paradigma.  ⁽⁷⁾  

The simple competition with neanderthals is not yet been considered as a cause of emergence of human language with all is't diversity.

Even in the absence of competition evolution takes place and creates new complexity. Some of the examples above fall into this cathegory. Another examples are conquering new environments were the pure number of ressources discloses any selection pressure. Why did organisms entering new continents or comming out of the ocean to land aquired new abilities if no selection pressure existed at the beginning of these expansions ? The standard answere is that in the new environment best adopted survives, but the logical problem with the model appears if the worst adoped survives too.

In this category falls the general question if, why and how the genotype changes without that some "badly adjusted" branches die out. Is the dying out the only method to fix genothype changes ? If the genetic drift, as it was dicovered, embraces the majory of DNA changes, which makes the natural selection mechanism to take the second place, than possibly something might be wrong with the general theory, in which natural selection plays a central role.

Not only without competitors but also without any external environment the evolution of a single system is (internally) possible. An example is given by the Gaia-hyphothesis describing the evolution of the biosphere as a whole, which cannot be reduced to nor explained by the evolution of its parts. Other examples regarding emergence of new synthesing systems are the emergence of thallus and generally multicellular organisms. The proper model of evolution should at least suggest a mechanism with which evolving parts (like species or cells) cause the new unifying complexity (like an ecosystem or thallus) to emerge. By the standard ToE evolving parts might promote new complexity or lead to selfdestruction of a whole such organism with equaly probability.

Misundestandings of the theory of evolution (ToE) are well known. Some are listed

here.

This text claims to show that these misundestandings have the common root: Elements of the theory have improper balance of importance - some without which the theory works well are positioned in the center of considerations and some other crucial aspects are spelled out as if they where secondary.

The solution of the above question, which this article gives is the insight that the true cause of evolution is self-amplification promoted by self-reference. To see how this argument procedes one have to move one abstraction level higher and consider a biological procreation machinery as a feedback engine  ⁽¹⁰⁾  

A short explanation, what I mean by a feedback engine is given below: To demonstrate how it works let us consider an example of an audio amplifier fed back through the microphone by the sound that it's loudspeaker produces. Obviously some high tone emerges. Control Theory distingushes between a positive and a negative feedback. The expotential growth (explosion) is the consequence of the first one, while the steady vibration is the consequence of the second. Consider an audio amplifier, which output (the speakers) is directed to the input (by a microphone). An amplifier is transforming each tone and produces a copy of it with an amplified volume. Obviously the amplitude is growing more and more as the result. As the growth is exponential the current reaches very soon borders determined by internal dumping. The balance of expotential growth with internal inefficiencies causing dumping will emerge. This dumping is different for different tones, so some spectrum of how much of each tone is represented in the output will establish itself. For a common audio amplifier this is simply some high tone, but generally a spectrum of tones with different amplitudes emerges. Such an amplifier provides a description of a general feedback-model. Let us notice also that: The true amplifier feed back by a sound it produces never creates unlimited expotential signal growth. This growth is only during a short time possible, after which internal and external dampings decide over the signal spectrum and the level. This is also with the biological feedbacks simmilar. The negative feedback, which mathematically causes vibrations plays in the nature importand role in self-regulatory mechanisms. (Take as an example of such "vibrations" switching on and off of the refrigerator, which regulatory loop is feed back by a negated temperature signal.) One may wonder that an amplifier-model can be found between living organisms.

Seeing it so means that products of procreation - ready organisms are abstractly speaking subjects of the same procreation mechanism, which amplifies them (actually it increases the number of indivduals). Why can such a replication in number be seen as selfreplication ? The neccessary abstraction moves from looking at individual organisms to considering organism type (or structure). It is this type then, which experiences amplification in number of it's instantiations.  ⁽¹¹⁾  

I use a language developed for Object Oriented Programming in computer science here.

. Each instance inherits the same structure from antecedants, the numer of instances increases and so the structure itself is getting amplified. It is the structure itself, which is supplied to the procreation mechanism and appears amplified in number in the next generation cycle.

An amplification takes place if there is more than one copy on output.  ⁽¹²⁾  

Practically speaking amplification means that two parents have more than two children.

. Why is the self-replication also a self-reference ?

In this way self-replication closes the feedback loop by which the genome plan refers itself. It is crucial, that the feedback refers not an organism, but rather it's abstraction - an organism form (or a genome plan, as stated above). Only with this abstraction the loop truely closes. When we speak of a feedback in the case of a self-replication we don't mean that an individial descedant references is't anecestor and possibly a son influences the way is's father lived. Instaed of an organism we mean an organism form i.e. it's abstraction. It is also a organism form (a specie) not an individial organism that evolves.

If one alows small differences between input and output now one can see that the self-replication loop stabilises the form and amplifies the number of copies or it makes it move towards some other form until it is stabile. This is the way the evolution ussually takes place.

The feedback loop of self-replication is naturally promoting self-amplification. The reason for this amplification is the nature of a feedback loop itself. The striking example of such self-amplification is the population growth, which generally takes place in nature until some limits, ussually superimposed by the environment are reached.

What is the gain of this description compared with the standard ToE ? - It explains the cause of evolution and the true force which makes it happen. The main insight of this article is the idea that the biological evolution is build upon such self-amplifying feedback loops. Beside the loop closed by heriting genes, which we call the natural feedback loop, we will consider also other feedback loops. They appear if generally some (biological) functionalities are passed to the next cycle. Bringing up children is a good example.

In the EbS model the natural selection remains the importand mechanism shaping a concrete phenotype and thus influencing the long term developement. It curves the individual species out of the stream of generation cycles. Yet:

1. The natural selection appears only as a hard limit set to self-refering amplifications. It means that the loop won't survive at all, which might be rather rare in nature and not so common as the standard ToE demands. In standard description one ussually expresses this by saying that evolution and selection takes place on the level of individual genes, which survive or not, wheras the whole organism do survives. The EbS model on the other hand provides more flexibility in the description: some elements are more amplified, some are less or even dumped, but the true elimination is rather a limit not a common way things happen.
   
   
2. The natural selection (elimination of elements) is therefore not a neccessary condition for the evolution to take place.
   
   
3. Without it (the selection) the self-refering loops expand until they reach any possible limits. The spectrum which emerges might have different possible damping factors as their cause and the natural selection is only one of them.

Aldow the ineritance plays in the evolution of organisms undeniably the central role traditionally the natural selection has been put in the middle of the ToE description. This caused the self-amplification, which the model presented here stresses to be overseen. As a consequence the whole theory was widely half-undestood in the society and importand phenomena has been half-explained by the science.

The self-reference (or feedback) model (EbS) demonstrates on the other hand more clear, what has (partially) already been known that:

1. The power of evolution comes not from the competition, but rather from the sun supplying the feedback circles with energy. Without it no evolution (which ever selection conditions chosen) is ever possible.
   
   
2. Without the natural selection the evolution is well functioning. The so called genetic drift is an example.
   
   
3. The EbS model points toward extensions capable to explain social phenomena and the possible future evolution of our planet as a whole.
   
   
4. It suggests more calculatory means to cope with evolution of a species pool filling a chosen ecosystem.

A simmilar self-reference like in the ancestor-descedant chain of organisms one may generally find in a chain reaction. By the latter I mean a situation in which some event E_i causes other simmilar events E_j. If the number of successors of E_i is greater one we obviously have a cascade. Why such a cascade is getting bigger and bigger like an avalanche ? This is the case in the equivalence class in which we abstract from differences between events and treat the predecessors and successors as of the same type. Even if the number of successors is very slightli greater then one, e.g. hundred predecessors have hundred and one successors if applied to the electrical amplifier model the output is bigger than the input and we may speak of an amplification.
Such avanlaches are well known. They are described by the velocity and the rate of growth.

Most processes in living nature are performed as cascades controlled by some dumping limits.

Considering a feedback engine of a whole ecosystem is much more complex, but some clues are seen immediately. One can argue that the spectrum of some distinct "tones" (called species) with only small information transfere (gene transfere) between them must come about.  (13)     I call it a natural spectrum for a given ecosystem.   Why is it so ? Without giving the strict proof this article suggests that in any given initial random spectrum naturally some minima and maxima appear just by definition of a random variety. They must further contract and posess thus fixpoints  (14)     See also Banach fix point theorem   identified in the biology as individual species. It is emasing to consider why "dumpings" of a given ecosystem choose the emerged species as it's natural spectrum.

The computational methods can in principle be applied to judge about it what species spectrum will emerge. The computer program could identify self-reference circles in the top-down manner hidding the details of modules of which they are constructed. For the given ecosystem the physical environment like astronomical data (the day-night rythmus, the energy flux from the sun), etc. together with the climat data (and pollutions) could be the main bundary conditions. Yet the true challenge appears when different "abstraction levels" are considerd i.e. organisms build each one of the others.

The astronomically stabile ecosystem makes the developement direction and complexity less dependand on the outer influence.

Therefore computations for limited ecosystems might be more successfull.

Let us see what consequences the mathematical model has on speciation. From the described contractions in the spiecies spectrum one may follow, that individual species will be more and more distinct from each other. Practically this means, that a gen flow between species will be weaker and weaker during eons. This explaines why the gen flow in microworld is significantly bigger than in the macroscale - the microworld is simply much elder.

Let us compare how ToE and EbS explain the evolution and growth of organized crime. Due to ToE the growth experiences an organisation, which succeded with the biggest deal and thus drove other from the "market". Due to EbS on the other hand growth comes from the selfreference i.e. wins, who succeded to invest money from the crime to the next deal and thus makes ressources to circulate. The first point of view explains only an accidental (random) growth, while the second way of thinking explains developments during longer period of time. Only the EbS explains the importance of money loundering  ⁽²²⁾  

It is well known for the police, that fighting money loundering plays a crucial role in preventing crime.

while ToE justifies a false hope, money comming from crime invested in a sound bussiness could make criminals to resign from crime. While some aspects of ToE mechanism may still play a role in the real world i.e. if criminals want to secure their assets for individial use, nevertheless EbS has the greater abbility to explain socioeconomy of organized crime as a whole in the way providing means to fight against it.

With the invention and use of mass media at the beginning of XX century a curious new loop was closed. One of the sudden consequences was an explosion of propaganda with desastrous developements - world wars. Some of these circulos still hold on (Russia). Obviously the proper information distribution and not a military prevention is what EbS offers to control the developement, why the ToE still stick to competition ideas :-(