On evolutionary processes in natural and artificial systems
David Green, David Newth, David J. Cornforth, Michael Kirley · 2001
The close links that now exist between biology and computation raise the prospect of setting species evolution in a broader, computational context. This context would comprise theories about the origins of pattern and order in complex systems. We argue that several processes play crucial roles in both natural and artificial evolution. One mechanism consists of critical changes between different system phases that promote order and variation respectively. Processes that lead to modular structures promote both robustness and increasing complexity in evolution. Examples of such processes include genetic convergence, gene shuffling and ordered asynchronous processing. We demonstrate that gene shuffling causes colocation of genes on chromosomes, thus promoting genetic modularity.