Bruce Weber

Closure in the Emergence and Evolution of Life: Multiple Discourses or One?

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Jan 25, 2006

: Evolutionary theory formulated in terms of complex systems dynamics shows interesting convergen... more : Evolutionary theory formulated in terms of complex systems dynamics shows interesting convergences with the approaches of developmental systems theory and biosemiotics, especially when applied to the problem of the origin of life. Although starting from difference conceptual assumptions, all three approaches agree on the importance of closure in the form of semi‐permeable chemical and informational boundaries and a more circumscribed role for DNA.

Biochemical Complexity: Emergence or Design?

Rhetoric and public affairs, 1998

... 6. Pascale Angelica Bachmann, Pier Luigi Luisi, and Jacques Lang, "Autocatalytic Self-Re... more

Selection, Interpretation, and the Emergence of Living Systems

Zygon, May 25, 2010

.The autocell proposal for the emergence of life and natural selection through the interaction of... more .The autocell proposal for the emergence of life and natural selection through the interaction of two reciprocally coupled self‐organizing processes specifically provides a protein‐first model for the origin of life that can be explored by computer simulations and experiment. Beyond the specific proposal it can be considered more generally as a thought experiment in which the principles deduced for the autocell could apply to other possible detailed chemical scenarios of catalytic polymers and protometabolism, including living systems emerging within membranelike barriers. The autocell model allows for the analysis of the emergence of not only agency and purpose but also of interpretation and semiosis as true living systems arise.

Towards a General Biology: Emergence of Life and Information from the Perspective of Complex Systems Dynamics

I argue that Darwinism is best described as a research tradition in which specific theories of ho... more I argue that Darwinism is best described as a research tradition in which specific theories of how natural selection acts to produce common descent and evolutionary change are instantiated by specific dynamical assumptions. The current Darwinian research program is the genetical theory of natural selection, or the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. Presently, however, there is ferment in the Darwinian Research Tradition as new knowledge from molecular and developmental biology, together with the deployment of complex systems dynamics, suggests that an expanded and extended evolutionary synthesis is possible, one that could be particularly robust in explaining the emergence of evolutionary novelties and even of life itself. Critics of Darwinism need to address such theoretical advances and not just respond to earlier versions of the research tradition.

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Darwinism Evolving

While Darwinism has successfully resisted reduction to physics, the authors point out that it has... more While Darwinism has successfully resisted reduction to physics, the authors point out that it has from the outset developed and applied its core explanatory concept, natural selection, by borrowing models from dynamics, a branch of physics. The recent development of complex systems dynamics may afford Darwinism yet another occasion to expand its explanatory power. Darwinism's use of dynamical models has received insufficient attention from biologists, historians, and philosophers who have concentrated instead on how evolutionary biology has maintained its autonomy from physics. Yet, as Depew and Weber observe, it is only by recovering Darwin's own relationship to Newtonian models of systems dynamics, and genetical Darwinism's relationship to statistical mechanics and probability theory, that insight can be gained into how Darwinism can successfully meet the challenges it is currently facing. Drawing on recent scholarship in the history of biology, Depew and Weber bring t...

Natural Selection and Self-Organization: Dynamical Models as Clues to a New Evolutionary Synthesis

Biology and Philosophy, 1996

The Darwinian concept of natural selection was conceived within a set of Newtonian background ass... more The Darwinian concept of natural selection was conceived within a set of Newtonian background assumptions about systems dynamics. Mendelian genetics at first did not sit well with the gradualist assumptions of the Darwinian theory. Eventually, however. Mendelism and Darwinism were fused by reformulating natural selection in statistical terms. This reflected a shift to a more probabilistic set of background assumptions based upon Boltzmannian systems dynamics. Recent developments in molecular genetics and paleontology have put pressure on Darwinism once again. Current work on self-organizing systems may provide a stimulus not only for increased problem solving within the Darwinian tradition, especially with respect to origins of life, developmental genetics, phylogenetic pattern, and energy-flow ecology, but for deeper understanding of the very phenomenon of natural selection itself. Since selforganizational phenomena depend deeply on stochastic processes, self-organizational systems dynamics advance the probability revolution. In our view, natural selection is an emergent phenomenon of physical and chemical selection. These developments suggest that natural selection may be grounded in physical law more deeply than is allowed by advocates of the autonomy of biology, while still making it possible to deny, with autonomists, that evolutionary explanations can be modeled in terms of a deductive relationship between laws and cases. We explore the relationship between, chance, self-organization, and selection as sources of order in biological systems in order to make these points.

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Selection, Interpretation, and the Emergence of Living Systems

Zygon®, 2010

.The autocell proposal for the emergence of life and natural selection through the interaction of... more .The autocell proposal for the emergence of life and natural selection through the interaction of two reciprocally coupled self‐organizing processes specifically provides a protein‐first model for the origin of life that can be explored by computer simulations and experiment. Beyond the specific proposal it can be considered more generally as a thought experiment in which the principles deduced for the autocell could apply to other possible detailed chemical scenarios of catalytic polymers and protometabolism, including living systems emerging within membranelike barriers. The autocell model allows for the analysis of the emergence of not only agency and purpose but also of interpretation and semiosis as true living systems arise.

Emergence of Life and Biological Selection from the Perspective of Complex Systems Dynamics

Evolutionary Systems, 1998

... Fox, SW, 1988. The Emergence of Life: Davwinian Evolution from the Inside. New York: Basic Bo... more

Towards a General Biology: Emergence of Life and Information from the Perspective of Complex Systems Dynamics

Biological Information, 2013

I argue that Darwinism is best described as a research tradition in which specific theories of ho... more I argue that Darwinism is best described as a research tradition in which specific theories of how natural selection acts to produce common descent and evolutionary change are instantiated by specific dynamical assumptions. The current Darwinian research program is the genetical theory of natural selection, or the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. Presently, however, there is ferment in the Darwinian Research Tradition as new knowledge from molecular and developmental biology, together with the deployment of complex systems dynamics, suggests that an expanded and extended evolutionary synthesis is possible, one that could be particularly robust in explaining the emergence of evolutionary novelties and even of life itself. Critics of Darwinism need to address such theoretical advances and not just respond to earlier versions of the research tradition.

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On the Emergence of Living Systems

Biosemiotics, 2009

If the problem of the origin of life is conceptualized as a process of emergence of biochemistry ... more If the problem of the origin of life is conceptualized as a process of emergence of biochemistry from proto-biochemistry, which in turn emerged from the organic chemistry and geochemistry of primitive earth, then the resources of the new sciences of complex systems dynamics can provide a more robust conceptual framework within which to explore the possible pathways of chemical complexification leading to living systems and biosemiosis. In such a view the emergence of life, and concomitantly of natural selection and biosemiosis, is the result of deep natural laws (the outlines of which we are only beginning to perceive) and reflects a degree of holism in those systems that led to life. Further, such an approach may lead to the development of a more general theory of biology and of natural organization, one informed by semiotic concepts.

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Darwinism, Design, and Complex Systems Dynamics

Debating Design

Page 1. (Published in William A. Demski and Michael Ruse (eds) Debating Design: From Darwin to DN... more

Biochemical Complexity: Emergence or Design?

Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 1998

... 6. Pascale Angelica Bachmann, Pier Luigi Luisi, and Jacques Lang, "Autocatalytic Self-Re... more

Philosophy for a New Biology

Evolution, 1986

The 10 original essays in Evolution at a Crossroads explore "post-Kuhnian" approaches t... more The 10 original essays in Evolution at a Crossroads explore "post-Kuhnian" approaches to conceptual problems in contemporary evolutionary and developmental theory. They focus in particular on the effect that current, rapid developments in molecular biology are having on our understanding of evolution and philosophy of science.Philosophy of science has swung widely between the dogmas of logical empiricism and relativism. Evolution at a Crossroads seeks to forge a new synthesis of the two trends to search for a more solid framework for evolutionary biology as well as a more solid philosophy of science. Complementing and extending such anthologies as Elliot Sober's Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, Robert Brandon's and Richard Burrian's Genes, Organisms, Populations, and Marjorie Grene's Dimensions of Darwinism, this book adds substantially to the emerging and rapidly developing discipline known as "the philosophy of biology."David J. Depew is Professor of Philosophy, and Bruce H. Weber is Professor of Chemistry and Molecular Biology, at California State University, Fullerton. A Bradford Book

Natural selection and self-organization

Biology & Philosophy, 1996

The Darwinian concept of natural selection was conceived within a set of Newtonian background ass... more The Darwinian concept of natural selection was conceived within a set of Newtonian background assumptions about systems dynamics. Mendelian genetics at first did not sit well with the gradualist assumptions of the Darwinian theory. Eventually, however. Mendelism and Darwinism were fused by reformulating natural selection in statistical terms. This reflected a shift to a more probabilistic set of background assumptions based upon Boltzmannian systems dynamics. Recent developments in molecular genetics and paleontology have put pressure on Darwinism once again. Current work on self-organizing systems may provide a stimulus not only for increased problem solving within the Darwinian tradition, especially with respect to origins of life, developmental genetics, phylogenetic pattern, and energy-flow ecology, but for deeper understanding of the very phenomenon of natural selection itself. Since selforganizational phenomena depend deeply on stochastic processes, self-organizational systems dynamics advance the probability revolution. In our view, natural selection is an emergent phenomenon of physical and chemical selection. These developments suggest that natural selection may be grounded in physical law more deeply than is allowed by advocates of the autonomy of biology, while still making it possible to deny, with autonomists, that evolutionary explanations can be modeled in terms of a deductive relationship between laws and cases. We explore the relationship between, chance, self-organization, and selection as sources of order in biological systems in order to make these points.

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Evolution in thermodynamic perspective: An ecological approach

Biology & Philosophy, 1989

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Closure in the Emergence and Evolution of Life: Multiple Discourses or One?

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2006

: Evolutionary theory formulated in terms of complex systems dynamics shows interesting convergen... more : Evolutionary theory formulated in terms of complex systems dynamics shows interesting convergences with the approaches of developmental systems theory and biosemiotics, especially when applied to the problem of the origin of life. Although starting from difference conceptual assumptions, all three approaches agree on the importance of closure in the form of semi‐permeable chemical and informational boundaries and a more circumscribed role for DNA.

Emergence of Life

Zygon®, 2007

ABSTRACT Discussions of the origin of life usually assume that there is a specific event, however... more ABSTRACT Discussions of the origin of life usually assume that there is a specific event, however improbable, by which dead matter became a living entity. Naturalistic accounts, although in seeming opposition to theistic explanations of the apparent design of even the simplest cells, often share the assumption that there is a specific line to be crossed. If the problem is recast as one of a process of emergence of biochemistry from protobiochemistry, which in turn emerged from the organic chemistry and geochemistry of primitive earth, the resources of the new sciences of complex systems dynamics can provide a more robust conceptual framework within which to explore the possible pathways of chemical complexification leading to life. In such a view the emergence of life is the result of deep natural laws (the outlines of which we are only beginning to perceive) and reflects a degree of holism in those systems that led to life. Further, there is the possibility of developing a more general theory of biology and of natural organization from such an approach. The emergence of life may thus be seen as an instance of the broader innate creativity of nature and consistent with a possible natural teleology.

What is Life? Defining Life in the Context of Emergent Complexity

Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, 2010

Erwin Schrödinger defined life not only as a &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp... more Erwin Schrödinger defined life not only as a &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;self-reproducing&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;quot; aperiodic crystal of DNA coding for proteins but within the context of living entities increasing their order by dissipating matter/energy gradients to maintain themselves away from equilibirium. Since then most definitions of life have focused on the former. But living cells do more than replicate their DNA. Cells also have membrane barriers across which metabolites must move, via which energy transduction as well as information processing occurs, and within which metabolic transformation occurs. An approach of complex systems dynamics, including nonequilibrium thermodynamics, may provide a more robust approach for defining life than a &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;naked replicator&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;quot; at the origin of life. The crucial issue becomes the process of emergence of life from pre-biotic chemistry, concomitant with the emergence of function, information, and semiosis. Living entities can be viewed as bounded, informed autocatalytic cycles feeding off matter/energy gradients, exhibiting agency, capable of growth, reproduction, and evolution. Understanding how life might have emerged should sharpen our definition of what life is.

Thermodynamic cycles, developmental systems, and emergence

Cybernetics &# 38; Human Knowing, 2000

Abstract: The problem of evolutionary emergence is particularly well exemplified in theories of t... more

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