Synthetic Philosophy and Deductive Engineering
Any gradual progressive change may be descibed as evolution, whether or not it conforms the Darwinian model of evolution by natural selection, or its more elaborately conceived modern syntheses. Cultural evolution is one important example, at one time connected to biological evolution through a tenuos analogy between genes and memes.
SPaDE is concerned with the long term future of intelligent systems, and evolutionary thinking is an important source of insight into the nature of that future. SPaDE is in progress at a time when major disruptions to the evolutionary process are in progress, themselves resulting from the cultural evolution which has brought us synthetic biology and artifical intelligence.
Using evolutionary thinking to anticipate the future of intelligent systems requires a broad conception of evolution, and an understanding of the evolutionary threads which are relevant to that future.
In this document the focus is on how evolution itself has evolved here on Earth, being transformed many times both in machinery of proliferation and in how evolution itself can be understood, what that word means and in what theory associated with the concept underpins reasoning about the progression of an evolving eco-system.
Richard Dawkins, in his book The Blind Watchmaker (1986) provides a generalised conception of evolution which is applicable to any evolving system, whether or not it is biological.
replication + heritable variation + differential success → cumulative, non-random accumulation of adaptive complexity.
The phenomena we consider do not always fit into this pattern, and yet more generality can be realised by some loosening of the “replication + heritable variation” formula. Progressive change associated with “proliferation” however it may be engedered, is given direction by differential rates of proliferation, leaving substantially open the nature and manner of proliferation, so long as there is an identifiable line of succession along which rates of proliferation can be measured.
Pre-biotic evolution is the first case against which Dawkins’ generalised conception struggles, for it substantially predates the possibility of heritable variation, preceding the genetic/somatic distinction which is the basis of heredity in biological evolution.
The evolutionary innovation beginning life on earth is the genetic/somatic distinction, which enables heritable variation and hence the possibility of natural selection. This is a precursor to the design/implementation distinction which appears much later as an aspect of cultural evolution, and which is a key enabler of the proliferation of intelligent systems. It enables progressively more complex organisms to evolve by permitting organisms to replicate most of their complex functionality, while admitting incremental changes whose effectiveness is tested in subsequent proliferation. In the first instance life is prokaryotic, single cells lacking a nucleus and replicating by binary fission. This starting point (the genome) is progressively elaborated as the evolving organisms become more complex, complexity required in adapting to new environments and in competing with similarly complex organisms for resources.
The evolution of life on earth progressed by such means for over 3 billion years before organisms became capable of aggregating knowledge and passing it on to their progeny, and hence of engaging in cultural evolution.