Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T05:10:28.510Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The aerobic transition as an economic ratchet

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2017

Rodrick Wallace
Rodrick Wallace*
Affiliation:
Division of Epidemiology, The New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY, USA
*
Author for correspondence: Rodrick Wallace, E-mail: rodrick.wallace@gmail.com, Wallace@nyspi.columbia.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Punctuated equilibrium, in the sense of Eldredge and Gould in 1972, and path dependence (Gould in 2002), dominate evolutionary processes, many of whose dynamics can be expressed in terms of interacting information sources (Wallace in 2010). Argument based on Feynman's (in 2000) characterization of information as a form of free energy leads to a close, if inverse, analogy between evolutionary transitions and economic ratchets. Driven by such a ‘self-referential’ mechanism, increases in available metabolic free energy – via the aerobic transition – led to the eukaryotic transition and to life as we know it. Formal analysis focuses on groupoid symmetries associated with the cognitive processes of gene expression, an extension of the symmetry breaking/making perspectives of physical science into biological phenomena. This suggests that understanding modalities of cognitive gene expression, as opposed to focus on genes themselves, provides the deepest insight into evolutionary phenomena, a perspective at some variance with current simplistic gene-centred views that constrain evolutionary theory.

Keywords

cognitionevolutiongroupoidinformation theorymetabolic free energypositive feedbacksymmetry breaking
Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Astrobiology , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , June 2019 , pp. 199 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Appleby, J, Mao, X and Rodkina, A (2008) Stabilization and destabilization of nonlinear differential equations by noise. IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control 53, 683–691.Google Scholar
Atlan, H and Cohen, I (1998) Immune information, self-organization, and meaning. International Immunology 10, 711–717.Google Scholar
Berner, R (1999) Atmospheric oxygen over phanerozoic time. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 96, 10955–10975.Google Scholar
Brown, R (1987) From groups to groupoids: a brief survey. Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society 19, 113–134.Google Scholar
Canfield, D, Rosing, M and Bjerrum, C (2006) Early anaerobic metabolisms. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 361, 1819–1836.Google Scholar
Champagnat, N, Ferriere, R and Meleard, S (2006) Unifying evolutionary dynamics: from individual stochastic processes to macroscopic models. Theoretical Population Biology 69, 297–321.Google Scholar
Cover, T and Thomas, J (2006) Elements of Information Theory, 2nd edn. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
de Groot, S and Mazur, P (1984) Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
Dembo, A and Zeitouni, O (1998) Large Deviations: Techniques and Applications, 2nd edn. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Eldredge, N and Gould, S (1972) Punctuated equilibrium: an alternative to phyletic gradualism. In: Schopf, T (ed). Models in Paleobiology. San Francisco: Freeman, Cooper and Co., pp. 82–115.Google Scholar
Feynman, R (2000) Lectures on Computation. New York: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Goldenfeld, N and Wose, C (2011) Life is physics: evolution as a collective phenomenon far from equilibrium. Annual Reviews of Condensed Matter Physics 2, 375–399.Google Scholar
Gould, S (2002) The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Landau, L and Lifshitz, E (2007) Statistical Physics, 3rd edn. Part I, New York: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Lewontin, R (2010) Not so natural selection (www.nybooks.com/articles/2010/05/27/not-so-natural-selection).Google Scholar
Mao, X (2007) Stochastic Differential Equations and Applications, 2nd edn. Chichester, UK: Norwood Publishing.Google Scholar
Pettini, M (2007) Geometry and Topology in Hamiltonian Dynamics. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Protter, P (1990) Stochastic Integration and Differential Equations. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Scripps (2017) http://www.scrippso2.ucsd.edu/plots.Google Scholar
Wallace, R (2010) Expanding the modern synthesis. Comptes Rendus Biologie 334, 701–709.Google Scholar
Wallace, R (2012) Consciousness, crosstalk and the mereological fallacy: an evolutionary perspective. Physics of Life Reviews 9, 426–453.Google Scholar
Wallace, R (2015) An Ecosystem Approach to Economic Stabilization: Escaping the Neoliberal Wilderness. New York: Routledge Advances in Heterodox Economics.Google Scholar
Wallace, R (2017) Computational Psychiatry: A Systems Biology Approach to the Epigenetics of Mental Disorders. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Wallace, R and Wallace, D (2016) Gene Expression and its Discontents: The Social Production of Chronic Disease, 2nd edn. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Weinstein, A (1996) Groupoids: unifying internal and external symmetry. Notices of the American Mathematical Society 43, 744–752.Google Scholar