Evolution (wiki) is a positive feedback loop: it's all about changes that perpetuate those changes. Whenever you change a gene in such a way that it makes that gene more likely to stick around. But it doesn't need to be a gene. You can make self-sustaining cultural changes, like memes, self-fullfilling prophecies. Of course, positive feedback loops are found in maaany places, and they are indeed one of the main causes of self-organization in complex systems, so it is nice to see that evolution is just an example of one.
Dawkins idea of replicators (see his article) of course fits well, because replicators are just self-sustaining structures. See also Units of evolution: A metaphysical essay and this, and The Elementary Units of Heredity cited in his article)
See MMathPhys oral presentation, Evolutionary computing, Genetics
Very nice explanation of a simple evolution simulator! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOFws_hhZs8&app=desktop
Ingredients for evolution
- Variation
- Heritability
- Selective pressure
Evolutionary biology
Read book: Dawkins - The extended phenotype, the selfish gene
Evolution also selects other things which are inherited, such as Proteins and other biological systems.
Evolutionary Dynamics- Exploring the Equations of Life - by Martin A. Nowak slides website Evolutionary dynamics on graphs djvu
Modern evolutionary synthesis
History of evolutionary thought
Evolution theory
The unit of evolution, I think, is the gene (see the selfish gene), plus a little bit of ancillary epigenetic information, as in methylation patterns.
Theoretical evolutionary genetics - Felsenstein (book), pdf
ON THE FORMALIZATION OF THE EVOLVING TRANSFORMATION SYSTEM MODEL
Evolutionary Theory and Mathematics
Mathematical Modeling of Evolution
“The arrival of the fittest”: Toward a theory of biological organization
Evolvability (learning theory)
biology as information dynamics – The Replicator Equation as an Inference Dynamic
Neutral theory of evolution
Kimura's neutral theory of evolution. He proposed that (at least for molecular evolution) most mutations are neutral, meaning that they don't lead to a change in fitness.
Evolutionary developmental biology
Population genetics
Features of evolving systems
Effects in evolution
Bias in GP maps, Arrival of the frequent
Genetic information and evolution
See Genetics
Genotype-phenotype map, Bias in GP maps
Discovery of a fundamental limit to the evolution of the genetic code
Scientists discover the evolutionary link between protein structure and function
Evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo)
Genotype-phenotype map, Developmental biology
Evolutionary ecology (evo-eco)
See Ecology
Evolutionary computing
Evolution in Complex systems
Bias in GP maps
Physics and evolution
The energy expansions of evolution. The history of the life–Earth system can be divided into five ‘energetic’ epochs, each featuring the evolution of life forms that can exploit a new source of energy. These sources are: geochemical energy, sunlight, oxygen, flesh and fire. The first two were present at the start, but oxygen, flesh and fire are all consequences of evolutionary events.
Some older disorganized thoughts:
Replicators at different levels.
Multilevel selection may not be necessary. However, it may be useful, it is just different ways of looking at evolution at different levels, depending on which processes are most important: mostly which (approximate) replicators are being looked at
Group, kin, individual, gene etc selections are just different proximate/ultimate levels of causation on the same evolutionary process
Statistical physics of evolution
People
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Mayr
See in wiki article of evolution
Statistical Physics of Adaptation
"Could one not say that, in the fortuitous combinations of the productions of nature, as there must be some characterized by a certain relation of fitness[8] which are able to subsist, it is not to be wondered at that this fitness is present in all the species that are currently in existence? Chance, one would say, produced an innumerable multitude of individuals; a small number found themselves constructed in such a manner that the parts of the animal were able to satisfy its needs; in another infinitely greater number, there was neither fitness nor order: all of these latter have perished. Animals lacking a mouth could not live; others lacking reproductive organs could not perpetuate themselves... The species we see today are but the smallest part of what blind destiny has produced..." ~ Pierre Louis Maupertuis (more than a century before Charles Darwin)