Evolutionary Systems

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. Evolutionary Systems: A Biological Point of View

   1. Introduction: Evolutionary Systems and Darwinian Theory of Evolution

      1. Evolution: Model or Metaphor

         • Vilmos Csányi

         Pages 1-12

      2. The Role of Natural Selection Theory in Understanding Evolutionary Systems

         • Stanley N. Salthe

         Pages 13-20

   2. Self-Organization Versus Selection?

      1. Darwinism and Developmentalism: Prospects for Convergence

         • David J. Depew

         Pages 21-32

      2. Towards High Evolvability Dynamics Introduction

         • Michael Conrad

         Pages 33-43

      3. The Beginning of the End: On the Origin of Final Cause

         • Eric Minch

         Pages 45-58

      4. Emergence of Life and Biological Selection from the Perspective of Complex Systems Dynamics

         • Bruce H. Weber

         Pages 59-66

      5. Self-Organization and Self-Construction of Order

         • Juan M. Alvarez De Lorenzana

         Pages 67-78

      6. Self-Organization and Optimization: Conflicting or Complementary Approaches?

         • Werner Callebaut

         Pages 79-100

      7. Pleiotropy and the Evolution of Adaptability

         • Martin Baatz

         Pages 101-112

   3. Development and Evolution: Thermodynamical, Information Theoretical and Mathematical Perspectives

      1. The Unified Theory and Selection Processes

         • Daniel R. Brooks

         Pages 113-128

      2. Information Increase in Biological Systems: How Does Adaptation Fit?

         • John D. Collier

         Pages 129-139

      3. Canonical Ensembles, Evolution of Competing Species, and the Arrow of Time

         • Jonathan D. H. Smith

         Pages 141-153

      4. Spontaneous Order, Evolution, and Autocatakinetics: The Nomological Basis for the Emergence of Meaning

         • Rod Swenson

         Pages 155-180

      5. Pragmatic Information and the Emergence of Meaning

         • Klaus Kornwachs

         Pages 181-196

      6. Emergence of Chaos in Evolving Volterra Ecosystems

         • Daniel M. Dubois

         Pages 197-214

3. Evolutionary Systems: An Epistemological Point of View

   1. Causality and Explanation

      1. Immanent Causality: A Spinozist Viewpoint on Evolution and Theory of Action

         • Henri Atlan

         Pages 215-231

      2. Causality as Constraint

         • Alicia Juarrero

         Pages 233-242

      3. Evolutionary Systems and the Four Causes: A Real Aristotelian Story?

         • Gertrudis Van De Vijver

         Pages 243-254

      4. Evolution as Its Own Cause and Effect

         • George Kampis

         Pages 255-265

The three well known revolutions of the past centuries - the Copernican, the Darwinian and the Freudian - each in their own way had a deflating and mechanizing effect on the position of humans in nature. They opened up a richness of disillusion: earth acquired a more modest place in the universe, the human body and mind became products of a long material evolutionary history, and human reason, instead of being the central, immaterial, locus of understanding, was admitted into the theater of discourse only as a materialized and frequently out-of-control actor. Is there something objectionable to this picture? Formulated as such, probably not. Why should we resist the idea that we are in certain ways, and to some degree, physically, biologically or psychically determined? Why refuse to acknowledge the fact that we are materially situated in an ever evolving world? Why deny that the ways of inscription (traces of past events and processes) are co-determinative of further "evolutionary pathways"? Why minimize the idea that each intervention, of each natural being, is temporally and materially situated, and has, as such, the inevitable consequence of changing the world? The point is, however, that there are many, more or less radically different, ways to consider the "mechanization" of man and nature. There are, in particular, many ways to get the message of "material and evolutionary determination", as well as many levels at which this determination can be thought of as relevant or irrelevant.

• development
• evolution
• science
• self-organization

`...the book is a statement of exciting open problems at the interface of self-organization and selection, and of how multidisciplinary perspectives can help refine evolutionary theory. It should prove valuable to future work on the subject.'
The Quarterly Review of Biology, 76:3(2001)

• Department of Philosophy, University of Ghent, Belgium

  Gertrudis Vijver

• Department of Biology, City University of New York — Binghamton University, USA

  Stanley N. Salthe

• Konrad Lorenz Institute, Vienna, Austria

  Manuela Delpos

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