Origin & Evolution of Life

An Open-Ended Approach to Understanding Local, Emergent Conservation Laws in Biological Evolution

By Keith Cowing

Status Report

physics.bio-ph

September 24, 2024

Filed under Artificial Life, biophysics, evolution, origin of life, physics.bio-ph

An Open-Ended Approach to Understanding Local, Emergent Conservation Laws in Biological Evolution — Topological alteration of a state graph. a) A system being coarse-grained and receiving arbitrary labels from an external observer. The example macrostate (u) labels are vectors of three binary-valued microstate variables denoted (v₁, v₂, v₃). Panels b to d display the topologies of the physicallyreachable state graph after constraining a variable of the labeling vector. The nodes and edges that became inaccessible as a consequence of applying a conservation law are displayed with lighter colors. The top row corresponds to setting value 0, while the bottom row corresponds to setting the variable to 1. b) Constraining variable v₁. On the one hand (b.1), a conservation law for v₁ = 0 leads the system to state u₁. On the other hand (b.2), with v₁ = 1, the system cannot escape from u₂. c) Constraining variable v₁. In the case v₁ = 1 in c.2), the graph is restricted to u₃ and has no possible transitions. The node does exist under a conservation law setting v₁ to 1 but there is no way to reach this node due to the topology of the unconstrained graph. d) Constraining variable v3. This variable is constant and equal to 1 in the unconstrained graph in a), so a conservation law setting v₃ = 0 such as in panel d.1 is meaningless for this case. — physics.bio-ph

While fields like Artificial Life have made huge strides in quantifying the mechanisms that distinguish living systems from non-living ones, particular mechanisms remain difficult to reproduce in silico.

Known as open-endedness, we’ve been successful in finding mechanisms that generate new states, but have been less successful in finding mechanisms that generate new rules. Here, we weigh whether or not analyzing the effects of internal and external system constraints on a system’s dynamics would be a fruitful avenue to understanding open-endedness.

We discuss the connection between physical constraints and the ways that the system can physically reach possible states while those constraints are present. It seems that the physical constraints that define biological objects (and dynamics) are maintained by dynamics that occur from within the system. This is in opposition to current modeling approaches where system constraints are maintained externally.

We suggest that constraints can be characterized as variables whose values are either completely conserved, quasi-conserved, or conditionally conserved. Regardless of whether or not a constrained variable is a part of the biological object or present in the object’s environment, we discuss how the accessible system states under that constraint can lead to local, emergent conservation laws (rules), with examples.

Finally, we discuss the possible benefits of formally understanding how system constraints that emerge from within a system lead to system dynamics that can be characterized as new, emergent rules — particularly for artificial intelligence, hybrid life, embodiment, astrobiology, and more. Understanding how new, local rules might emerge from within the system is crucial for understanding how open-ended systems continually discover new update rules, in addition to continually discovering new states.

Alyssa M Adams, Eliott Jacopin, Praful Gagrani, Olaf Witkowski

Comments: 8 pages, 2 figures, Accepted for oral presentation at IEEE WCCI 2024
Subjects: Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph)
Cite as: arXiv:2407.03345 [physics.bio-ph](or arXiv:2407.03345v2 [physics.bio-ph] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2407.03345
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Submission history
From: Alyssa Adams
[v1] Sun, 2 Jun 2024 11:25:59 UTC (7,142 KB)
[v2] Wed, 17 Jul 2024 10:59:43 UTC (7,142 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.03345
Astrobiology

Keith Cowing

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻

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