Zipf's Law, unbounded complexity and open-ended evolution.

ABSTRACT: A major problem for evolutionary theory is understanding the so-called open-ended nature of evolutionary change, from its definition to its origins. Open-ended evolution (OEE) refers to the unbounded increase in complexity that seems to characterize evolution on multiple scales. This property seems to be a characteristic feature of biological and technological evolution and is strongly tied to the generative potential associated with combinatorics, which allows the system to grow and expand their available state spaces. Interestingly, many complex systems presumably displaying OEE, from language to proteins, share a common statistical property: the presence of Zipf's Law. Given an inventory of basic items (such as words or protein domains) required to build more complex structures (sentenc

SUBMITTER: Corominas-Murtra B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6303796 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature