Adapting to a warmer world:
No going back
Just a decade ago,
'adaptation' was something of a dirty word in the climate arena — an
insinuation that nations could continue with business as usual and deal with
the mess later. But greenhouse-gas emissions are increasing at an unprecedented
rate and countries have failed to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol
climate treaty. That stark reality has forced climate researchers and
policy-makers to explore ways to weather some of the inevitable changes.
On the Foundations of the
Theory of Evolution
Darwinism conceives
evolution as a consequence of random variation and natural selection, hence it
is based on a materialistic, i.e. matter-based, view of science inspired by
classical physics. But matter in itself is considered a very complex notion in modern
physics. More specifically, at a microscopic level, matter and energy are no
longer retained within their simple form, and quantum mechanical models are
proposed wherein potential form is considered in addition to actual form. In
this paper we propose an alternative to standard Neodarwinian evolution theory.
We suggest that the starting point of evolution theory cannot be limited to
actual variation whereupon is selected, but to variation in the potential of
entities according to the context. We therefore develop a formalism, referred
to as Context driven Actualization of Potential (CAP), which handles
potentiality and describes the evolution of entities as an actualization of
potential through a reiterated interaction with the context.
On the Foundations of the
Theory of Evolution
Diederik Aerts, Stan
Bundervoet, Marek Czachor, Bart D'Hooghe, Liane Gabora, Philip Polk, Sandro
Sozzo
Is Science Mostly Driven by
Ideas or by Tools?
We are standing now as we stood in the 1950s, between a Kuhnian dream of
sudden illumination and a Galisonian reality of laborious exploring. On one
side are string theory and speculations about multiverses; on the other are
all-sky surveys and observations of real black holes. The balance today is more
even than it was in the 1950s. String theory is a far more promising venture
than Einstein's unified field theory. Kuhn and Galison are running neck and
neck in the race for glory. We are lucky to live in a time when both are going
strong.
Is Science Mostly Driven by Ideas or by Tools?
Freeman J. Dyson
Science 14 December 2012:
Vol. 338 no. 6113 pp. 1426-1427 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1232773
Individual memory and the
emergence of cooperation
The social brain hypothesis states that
selection pressures associated with complex social relationships have driven
the evolution of sophisticated cognitive processes in primates. We investigated
how the size of cooperative primate communities depends on the memory of each
of its members and on the pressure exerted by natural selection. To this end we
devised an evolutionary game theoretical model in which social interactions are
modelled in terms of a repeated Prisoner's Dilemma played by individuals who
may exhibit a different memory capacity. Here, memory is greatly simplified and
mapped onto a single parameter m describing the number of conspecifics whose
previous action each individual can remember. We show that increasing m enables
cooperation to emerge and be maintained in groups of increasing sizes.
Furthermore, harsher social dilemmas lead to the need for a higher m in order
to ensure high levels of cooperation. Finally, we show how the interplay
between the dilemma individuals face and their memory capacity m allows us to
define a critical group size below which cooperation may thrive, and how this
value depends sensitively on the strength of natural selection.
Individual memory and the emergence of cooperation
João Moreira, Jeromos Vukov, Cláudia Sousa, Francisco C. Santos, André F. d'Almeida, Marta D. Santos, Jorge M. Pacheco
Animal Behaviour
Available online 4 December 2012
In Press, Corrected Proof
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2012.10.030
