Evolution

Videos

Evolving Ourselves - How Non-Random Mutations Are Changing Life On Earth As We Know It

The Evolution of Human Physical Activity - Adaptation to High Altitudes and Aquatic Environments

The Evolution of Human Physical Activity - A Human Genetic Mechanism for Endurance Running

Evolution can’t explain your grandmother

Evolution for Dummies: Common Misunderstandings About Darwinism

Evidence for consciousness-based evolution.

Articles/Studies

Breakthrough Fossil Sheds Light on the Dawn of Diverse Animal Life

Cognition, Information Fields and Hologenomic Entanglement: Evolution in Light and Shadow

Huge cache of mammal genomes offers fresh insights on human evolution

More Turbulence at the Base of the Tree of Life

Should evolution be viewed as a transfer of information?

Lurking in Genomic Shadows: How Giant Viruses Fuel the Genetic Evolution of Organisms

Biological information systems: Evolution as cognition-based information management. Progress in biophysics and molecular biology.

These bizarre ancient species are rewriting animal evolution

Did Fermentation Drive Human Brain Evolution?

NeoDarwinism:

• Natural selection
• Descent by gradual modification
• Random genetic mutation is the source of variation
• Evolutionary effects are exerted in the context of populations.

The Darwinian narrative is Victorian. Darwin is credited with the "survival of the fittest" evolutionary theory which has guided thinking since 1859 when he published "Origin of Species". In the 1930's as genes were being discovered there was an attempt to incorporate genetic variation into the theory of natural selection - called "Neodarwinism". Neodarwinism is a combination of natural selection and the idea that the variation that's part of the evolutionary system is secondary to random genetic mutation.

NeoDarwinism is incorrect because our entire concept of the gene has changed.

What we know now is evolution is an entirely collaborative enterprise, in which competition is a substantial element of that mutualistic experience.

Cognition Based Evolution

An alternative is "Cognition Based Evolution". We have new science that can be brought into an evolutionary narrative. It starts with cellular intelligence as the beginning. The basis is information, the communication of information, the transfer of information as the proper mechanism of biological action. It comes to the fact that we're all holobionts. As for consciousness, a large body of science now suggests that consciousness started with the singularity and moved forward with "the big bang" and that consciousness is primary..."matter" is an emergent property of consciousness.

The new starting point:

Life requires cognition at all levels – James Shapiro, biologist at University of Chicago. Excellent experimental evidence reveals that all cells have ‘awareness’ and ‘preference’ at their own limits and scale- to sustain critical homeostasis. They can estimate their own internal environment and accurately distinguish it from their external environment.

They are not thermostats, this is not a ‘ghost-like presence' that does it automatically, like a machine. There’s nothing machine-like about it. Unlike machines, every cell and microbe has a range of faculties that are unknown up until a few years ago. They react, anticipate, predict, socialize, problem-solve.

Information is energy put to purpose and defines the living circumstance as a phase transition. Its  a state function just like entropy. Its not linked to the number of steps to achieve it. There are pervasive information fields. Once you have cognitive agency it must use information by attaching to "information-space-time". In biological circumstances as opposed to physical data, it's imprecise. The point-to-point relationships of a rock are very firm. In biology when you have observer participants information is received through a medium of transmission, there's subjectivity, so attachment to information-space-time is always ambiguous and imprecise. This information space is complex since its and attachment to the physical environment and all the other players in that environment. The living circumstance is one where you are an aggregation with other observer-participants. You have your self-identity.

Attachment to information space permits the actual agency of biological and evolutionary development. It permits:

• An identifiable information cycle including assessment of information, communication, deployment as bioactive expression. All of this happens within a context. The information a cell has to rely on is never absolutely clear so information requires management.
• An information management system
• Cell-cell signaling is part of both

Stop thinking of the cell in a material sense but as an informational item and means of information management.

As you travel through information space and use information the primary problem is you have to cope with its imprecision. How do self-referential systems cope with the aspect of information that’s uncertain? Cells don’t think like we do, we’re talking about a minimal cognition. Enough to sense and respond to the environment and anticipate problems. There’s enormous chatter among microbes and that’s why biofilms form, to acquire preferential states through better information. So they collaborate, yielding co-dependent relationships. They exist through reciprocation. How do they do this? Coherences, resonances. That’s where bioelectric dynamics comes in. All of this cycles through the informational matrix.

• Information/communication is the living circumstance.
• An attachment to an information matrix is a necessity
• Biology is the acquisition, distribution, implementation and management of information – an informational interactome.
• Biological development and evolution must concentrate on the means by which information is acquired, assessed, deployed and communicated.

The Information Cycle:

Every living thing is cognitive, meaning it's attached to information space. The yellow box is all about information assessment & communication of information which is the living circumstance. The information cycle yields cellular engineering (Darwin's variation) = phenotype.  Selection is not the driver, variation is the driver. Variation is presented to selection and selection culls (must be able to survive in the environment).

The green box shows overlapping architectures - the holobiome.

Biological complexity is a product of an engineering process. In evolutionary biology there's a concept of niche construction, a form of mutual reciprocity between an organism and its environment and organisms with other organisms. For example...earthworms are engineers of the soil. Cells are also engineers. They create the tissue ecologies in much the same way that humans elaborate cities through both collaboration and competition.

A new endpoint:

• All multicellular eukaryotes are holobionts, there are no exceptions. Every single organism that we can see is a holobiont. It means we're not a singularity. Though we see ourselves as single beings, we're actually a vast constellation of our own human cells plus an enormous number of microbes. Our microbes are vital for every aspect of our metabolism and we can't survive without them, nor can they be what they want to be without us.
• Abundant cross-domain and cross-kingdom communication
• A cellular/microbial world

Differences between NeoDarwinism and Cognition-based evolution

Why does this matter to you?

It permits typically unasked questions

• Whose problems are being solved - specifically within the cell by an EM system emanating from DNA, or if its intercellular
• Who serves whom or what – reciprocation
• What maintains stability (how is information being constrained? How does a cell limit information space into aspects that can solve its problems?)
• What exerts constraints on information
• Random or not

If biology is information based, then systematized management is required. The point of information management is to sustain homeostatic equipoise - the cellular level is paramount. Its a product of the self-referential state. The cell is interested in managing information to stay at its proper set point. The cell is always serving the cell, "Its about me".

Information architectures and motifs underpin mutualistic behaviors –

Dependent on attachment to information-space

With an informal architecture, the cell “knows” its place (it knows its informational architecture)

All aspects of the cell participate. It’s not all about genes.

Implications for Bioelectrodynamics:

• Ambiguous information
• The cell is an active, crowded environment
• Why does noise matter: a celll's intracellular and cell-to-cell communication tools are dealing with a noisy environment. Noise is information (think music). Harnessing of stochasticity (The randomness that noise implies with respect to information is being used in an active manner.)

Practical Applications:

• Data transformation – There aren't going to be any pure signals sent from sender to receiver, they have to be data transformed. Fourier domains, anamorphic time-stretch transform-
• The cell as an intensely coordinating whole – senders and receivers – reciprocating intra-cellular observer/participants. We don't know where self ends, where self is embodied within a cell.
• The crowded, active environment of the cell implies the need for spatial mapping. DNA spacial mapping is part of knowing where it is in information space/time. DNA reacts to insults in a deliberative manner. Think of EM as a means of spacial mapping.
• Importance of all cellular players…especially cytoskeleton and plasma membrane
• Think water. Water in a cell has no direct relationship to the water we experience.
• Don’t ignore the extracellular matrix. Somehow its an active player in the resonances and coherences that are part of the EM cellular experience.

A bioelectrodynamic  signal is not  a phenomenon...it's a tool and a solution for a self-referential cell.