Quantitative Biology

1202 Submissions

[1] viXra:1202.0076 [pdf] submitted on 2012-02-24 14:46:48

Life as Evolving Software

Authors: Gregory Chaitin
Comments: 23 Pages.

In this paper we present an information-theoretic analysis of Darwin's theory of evolution, modeled as a hill-climbing algorithm on a fitness landscape. Our space of possible organisms consists of computer programs, which are subjected to random mutations. We study the random walk of increasing fitness made by a single mutating organism. In two different models we are able to show that evolution will occur and to characterize the rate of evolutionary progress, i.e., the rate of biological creativity.
Category: Quantitative Biology