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Generalising Darwinian Evolution by Using Its Smallest-Scale Representation as a Foundation

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Evolution and Transitions in Complexity

Abstract

The Latin word evolvere means to unroll. As unrolling is a very general concept, the sensu lato interpretation of evolution has become a catchall for many different dynamic phenomena in nature. While zooming in on part of this broad context, this chapter focuses on the Darwinian kind of evolution. The structure of Darwinian evolution was analysed in Chap. 4, resulting in the identification of an object-based graph-pattern for Darwinian evolution at the smallest scale. The hypothesis of this book is that, because of its irreducible complexity, a definition at the smallest scale can serve as a reference for a range of extensions, which define a family of related patterns of Darwinian evolution. To test this hypothesis, several extensions of the pattern in the smallest form are explored. The results offer a new perspective on the proposition of generalised Darwinism that evolutionary phenomena in different domains can be viewed as identical in their basic structure if they are analysed at a sufficiently abstract level of analysis.

‘The controversy on the appropriate use of Darwinist concepts in evolutionary economics has been rekindled and modified by the idea of “ Universal Darwinism ” which has recently gained much attention among biologists and biologically-inclined philosophers. This proposition holds that all evolutionary processes share the same abstract structure of the Darwinist scheme of variation, selection and retention . Put differently, evolution outside the realm of biology is not argued to be similar to evolution in nature , but the proposition is that, at a sufficiently abstract level of analysis, evolutionary processes in different domains are identical in their basic structure (cf., e.g. Hull 1988 ; Dennett 1995 )’(Buenstorf 2006 )

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wageningen University and Research, Environmental Research (Alterra), 47, 6700 AA, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Gerard A. J. M. Jagers op Akkerhuis & Hendrik Pieter Spijkerboer

  2. Bayer Vegetable Seeds, Nunhems Netherlands BV, 4005, 6080 AA, Haelen, The Netherlands

    Hans-Peter Koelewijn

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  1. Gerard A. J. M. Jagers op Akkerhuis
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Correspondence to Gerard A. J. M. Jagers op Akkerhuis .

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  1. Wageningen University & Research, Environmental Research (Alterra), Wageningen, Gelderland, The Netherlands

    Gerard A.J.M Jagers op Akkerhuis

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Jagers op Akkerhuis, G.A.J.M., Spijkerboer, H.P., Koelewijn, HP. (2016). Generalising Darwinian Evolution by Using Its Smallest-Scale Representation as a Foundation. In: Jagers op Akkerhuis, G. (eds) Evolution and Transitions in Complexity. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43802-3_6

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