Speculations on Biology, Information and Complexity
Gregory J. Chaitin · 2006
It would be nice to have a mathematical understanding of basic biological concepts and to be able to prove that life must evolve in very general circumstances. At present we are far from being able to do this. But I’ll discuss some partial steps in this direction plus what I regard as a possible future line of attack. Can Darwinian evolution be made into a mathematical theory? Is there a fundamental mathematical theory for biology? Darwin = math?! In 1960 the physicist Eugene Wigner published a paper with a wonderful title, “The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences. ” In this paper he marveled at the miracle that pure mathematics is so often extremely useful in theoretical physics. To me this does not seem so marvelous, since mathematics and physics co-evolved. That however does not diminish the miracle that at a fundamental level Nature is ruled by