The Evolution and Development of the Universe
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The Evolution and Development of the Universe Edited by Clément Vidal Special Issue of the First International Conference on the Evolution and Development of the Universe, 8-9 October 2008, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris. EDU 2008 p2 Contents Preface 5 List of contributors 7 Introduction 9 Acknowledgements 14 Part I - Physics and Cosmology Scale Relativity and Fractal Space-Time: Theory and Applications 15 Laurent Nottale Scale Relativity: an Extended Paradigm for Physics and Biology? 80 Commentary by Charles Auffray and Denis Noble Multiscale Integration in Scale Relativity Theory 83 Response by Laurent Nottale The Self-organization of Time and Causality: 87 steps towards understanding the ultimate origin Francis Heylighen Symmetries and Symmetry-breakings: 100 the fabric of physical interactions and the flow of time Commentary by Giuseppe Longo Symmetry, Potentiality and Reversibility 102 Response by Francis Heylighen The Role of Energy Conservation and Vacuum Energy 104 in the Evolution of the Universe Jan Greben Anthropomorphic Quantum Darwinism as an explanation for Classicality 131 Thomas Durt On definitions of Information in Physics 154 Commentary by Nicolás Lori Competing Definitions of Information versus Entropy in Physics 157 Response by Thomas Durt Application of Quantum Darwinism to Cosmic Inflation: 160 an example of the limits imposed in Aristotelian logic by information-based approach to Gödel’s incompleteness Nicolás Lori and Alex Blin EDU 2008 p3 Part II – Biology Towards a Hierarchical Definition of Life, the Organism, and Death 169 Gerard Jagers op Akkerhuis The Issue of "Closure" in Jagers op Akkerhuis's Operator Theory 186 Commentary by Nico van Straalen Definitions of Life are not only Unnecessary, 188 but they can do Harm to Understanding Commentary by Rob Hengeveld Explaining the Origin of Life 190 is not enough for a Definition of Life Response by Gerard Jagers op Akkerhuis Complexity and Evolution: 193 a study of the growth of complexity in organic and cultural evolution Börje Ekstig Does Species Evolution Follow Scale Laws ? First Applications of the 212 Scale Relativity Theory to Fossil and Living-beings Jean Chaline Part III - Philosophy and Big Questions Development (and Evolution) of the Universe 248 Stanley Salthe Must Complex Systems Theory Be Materialistic? 260 Commentary by Horace Fairlamb Friends of Wisdom? 263 Commentary by Gertrudis Van de Vijver Materialism: Replies to Comments from Readers 266 Response by Stanley Salthe Possible Implications of the Quantum Theory of Gravity: 269 An Introduction to the Meduso-Anthropic Principle Louis Crane Two Purposes of Black Hole Production 274 Commentary by Clément Vidal From Philosophy to Engineering 277 Response by Louis Crane EDU 2008 p4 Computational and Biological Analogies 280 for Understanding Fine-Tuned Parameters in Physics Clément Vidal On the Nature of Initial Conditions and 305 Fundamental Parameters in Physics and Cosmology Commentary by Jan Greben Cosmological Artificial Selection: Creation out of something? 307 Commentary by Rüdiger Vaas Fine-tuning, Quantum Mechanics and 310 Cosmological Artificial Selection Response by Clément Vidal The Meaning of Life in a Developing Universe 324 John Stewart What and that Humans do: Participating in the Meaning of life, 341 a Contributor's Critique Commentary by Franc Rottiers Analysis of Some Speculations Concerning 344 the Far-Future of Intelligent Civilizations Commentary by Clément Vidal The Future of Life and What it Means for Humanity 349 Response by John Stewart Word Frequency 353 EDU 2008 p5 Preface The Evo Devo Universe Community In 2007, John M. Smart and I entered in contact discussing issues about universal change and broad cosmological and futuristic views. We noticed that scholars studying the cosmos where mainly into theoretical physics. It is of course an important approach, but it does not connect with life, intelligence and technology. Yet, we were also aware of dispersed insights in cosmology, theoretical and evolutionary developmental (evo-devo) biology and the complexity sciences, which are providing ways to understand our universe within a broader framework. We thought that these results and hypotheses deserved to be explored, criticized, and analyzed by an international interdisciplinary research community which we set up in 2008: ‘Evo Devo Universe (EDU)’. Such a framework promises to advance our understanding of both unpredictable “evolutionary” processes and predictable “developmental” processes at all scales, including the human scale. I welcome any researcher interested in these topics to join the research community at http://evodevouniverse.com The Conference on the Evolution and Development of the Universe John and I first started to work actively on building the EDU website in 2008 (http://www.evodevouniverse.com). However, we understood that having a website and a virtual community was not enough. To effectively collaborate, human beings still need to meet in flesh. We thus focused our energy into setting up "The First International Conference on the Evolution and Development of the Universe" project1. With the early support and interest of Alain Prochiantz (neurobiologist), Jean-Pierre Luminet (cosmologist) and Francis Heylighen (systems theorist) our conference project was funded by The Complex Systems Institute, Paris (ISC-PIF). Speakers at the conference were selected by our scientific committee based on their abstract. Yet, after the conference, I organized a more in depth peer-review on all papers, except one. Exceptionally, we decided not to peer- review Crane's paper, because it was since 1994 on the popular arXiv repository as a non-published pre-print, and researchers already referred to it "as it was". However, in this Special Issue, Crane's position was updated and clarified in his response to my commentary on his paper. The special issue you have here is thus a selection of papers presented at the conference, plus a few other papers by Crane, Heylighen and Salthe. This volume is also the result of time and efforts from many referees (about 40 referee reports in total). I admire and endorse Richard Gordon's courage and position to refuse anonymous refereeing. I find the arguments for non-anonymous refereeing very 1 EDU 2008, http://evodevouniverse.com/wiki/Conference_2008 EDU 2008 p6 compelling. Thomas Durt and Nicolás Lori also engaged in a transparent peer- review, which was long and sometimes difficult. Their disagreement about the definition of information in physics gave rise to a discussion which is reflected in this proceedings by Lori's commentary: On definitions of Information in Physics. I think that referees should be more recognized in this indispensable task for the scientific community. It is not normal that they do it on a voluntary basis and almost without recognition. A system to academically and publicly recognize this effort is yet to be invented. After the peer-review, I organized a public invitation to comment on the selected papers2. I used the "Open Peer Commentary" (OPC) model for this purpose, which was initially used by journals Current Anthropology and Behavioral and Brain Sciences. The purpose of OPC is to provide a concentrated constructive interaction between author and commentators. The target article, commentaries, and authors' responses are published together. I am delighted with the outcome of this call for commentaries, which generated 12 commentaries. Counting author's replies, this makes a total of 20 additional manuscripts to the main articles, giving additional discussion, critique, debate to this special issue. These exchanges show research as it is done, with explicit disagreements and debates. If authors agree to provide further responses to new commentaries, we would be glad to also continue this OPC process for later issues of Foundations of Science. Finally, I apologize for the varying layouts of this proceedings preprint. I invite the demanding reader to wait a few months for the publication of all articles in Foundations of Science. December 2009, Clément Vidal. 2 http://evodevouniverse.com/wiki/EDU_2008_Call_for_Commentaries EDU 2008 p7 List of Contributors Charles Auffray Functional Genomics and Systems Biology for Health, CNRS, Institute of Biological Sciences, Villejuif, France. [email protected] Alex Blin Physics Department, Coimbra University, Coimbra, Portugal. [email protected] Jean Chaline Biogeosciences Laboratory, Bourgogne University, Dijon, France. [email protected] Louis Crane Mathematics Department, Kansas State University, Manhattan KS, USA. c c [email protected] Thomas Durt Department of Physics, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium. [email protected] Börje Ekstig Department of Curriculum Studies, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden. [email protected] Horace Fairlamb Departement of Arts & Science, University of Houston-Victoria, Victoria, TX, USA. [email protected] Jan Greben Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Pretoria, South Africa. [email protected] Rob Hengeveld Institute of Ecological Science, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. [email protected] Francis Heylighen, Department of Philosophy, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium. [email protected] EDU 2008 p8 Gerard Jagers op Akkerhuis Centre for Ecosystem Studies, Wageningen University and Research Centre, Wageningen, The Netherlands. [email protected] Giuseppe Longo Computer Science Department, CNRS, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France. [email protected]