A Simple Communication Hypothesis: The Process of Evolution Reconsidered

Abstract

The scientific basis of Darwinian evolution is reconsidered from the recent progress in chemistry and physics. The idea, promoting a stochastic communication hypothesis, reflects Kant’s famed insight that ‘space and time are the two essential forms of human sensibility’, translated to modern practices of quantum science. The formulation is commensurate with pioneering quantum mechanics, yet extended to take account of dissipative dynamics of open systems incorporating some fundamental features of special and general relativity. In particular we apply the idea to a class of Correlated Dissipative Structures, CDS, in biology, construed to sanction fundamental processes in biological systems at finite temperatures, ordering precise space-time scales of free energy configurations subject to the Correlated Dissipative Ensemble, CDE. The modern scientific approach is appraised and extended incorporating both the material- as well as the immaterial parts of the Universe with significant inferences regarding processes governed by an evolved program. The latter suggests a new understanding of the controversy of molecular versus evolutionary biology. It is demonstrated by numerous examples that such an all-inclusive description of Nature, including the law of self-reference, widens the notion of evolution from the micro to the cosmic rank of our Universe.