The World Is Not a Theorem

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Abstract

The evolution of the biosphere unfolds as a luxuriant generative process of new living forms and functions. Organisms adapt to their environment, exploit novel opportunities that are created in this continuous blooming dynamics. Affordances play a fundamental role in the evolution of the biosphere, for organisms can exploit them for new morphological and behavioral adaptations achieved by heritable variations and selection. This way, the opportunities offered by affordances are then actualized as ever novel adaptations. In this paper, we maintain that affordances elude a formalization that relies on set theory: we argue that it is not possible to apply set theory to affordances; therefore, we cannot devise a set-based mathematical theory to deduce the diachronic evolution of the biosphere.

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Most cited references 18

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Autopoiesis: The organization of living systems, its characterization and a model

F.G. Varela, H.R. Maturana, Jorge R Uribe (1974)

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A latent capacity for evolutionary innovation through exaptation in metabolic systems.

Aditya Barve, Andreas Wagner (2013)

Some evolutionary innovations may originate non-adaptively as exaptations, or pre-adaptations, which are by-products of other adaptive traits. Examples include feathers, which originated before they were used in flight, and lens crystallins, which are light-refracting proteins that originated as enzymes. The question of how often adaptive traits have non-adaptive origins has profound implications for evolutionary biology, but is difficult to address systematically. Here we consider this issue in metabolism, one of the most ancient biological systems that is central to all life. We analyse a metabolic trait of great adaptive importance: the ability of a metabolic reaction network to synthesize all biomass from a single source of carbon and energy. We use novel computational methods to sample randomly many metabolic networks that can sustain life on any given carbon source but contain an otherwise random set of known biochemical reactions. We show that when we require such networks to be viable on one particular carbon source, they are typically also viable on multiple other carbon sources that were not targets of selection. For example, viability on glucose may entail viability on up to 44 other sole carbon sources. Any one adaptation in these metabolic systems typically entails multiple potential exaptations. Metabolic systems thus contain a latent potential for evolutionary innovations with non-adaptive origins. Our observations suggest that many more metabolic traits may have non-adaptive origins than is appreciated at present. They also challenge our ability to distinguish adaptive from non-adaptive traits.

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Affordances in Psychology, Neuroscience, and Robotics: A Survey

Lorenzo Jamone, Emre Ugur, Angelo Cangelosi … (2018)

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Author and article information

Contributors

Stuart Kauffman: (View ORCID Profile)

Andrea Roli: (View ORCID Profile)

Journal

Journal ID (publisher-id): ENTRFG

Title: Entropy

Abbreviated Title: Entropy

Publisher: MDPI AG

ISSN (Electronic): 1099-4300

Publication date Created: November 2021

Publication date (Electronic): November 06 2021

Volume: 23

Issue: 11

Page: 1467

Article

DOI: 10.3390/e23111467

PubMed ID: 34828165

SO-VID: 55741494-6c7e-4254-bb68-f66a16d1d2ec

License:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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