Evolution's Quiet Revolution: Webs, Robots, Price Equation

By Sean Nee

A Century after Darwin, life on Earth looks completely different to us. We now know that our genetic make-up looks more like that of HIV than chimpanzees. We have learned of giant viruses, like those parasitised by Sputnik Virophage, which have around the same number of genes as the minimum needed to make a human - some even have immune systems. Microbes have complex social lives involving altruism, self-sacrifice and suicide. They form biofilms - biological tissue - that are so vast they can cover kilometers of the ocean floor, layer your lungs, and communicate electrically. Some do it in the same way as the neurons in our brains. They form "cities of microbes" which have the economic problems associated with public goods and the division of labor.Even on his own terms, Darwin left behind unfinished business. He was frank about the fact that he could not explain why we had evolved to have equal numbers of men and women, which is an obvious and striking fact about our biology. He also had only a vague understanding of the evolution of altruism, which poses an apparent problem for the idea that natural selection produces the survival of the fittest. These are two examples of bigger gaps in Darwin's thinking. Nearly fifty years ago, George Price wrote an equation which has since been combined with crucial ideas from the "Beautiful Mind" of John Nash called, simply, the Price Equation. This clears up the loose ends left in understanding sex ratios and altruism by Darwin's theory. Even more, it provides the basis for understanding the extraordinary world as we can now see it for the first time through the lens of molecular biology. Other ideas unavailable to Darwin are those of self-reproducing robots, thought of by John von Neumann, and computer programs, an idea invented by Alan Turing, both men famous for their contributions on the WWII battlefields of the mind. These ideas combine naturally with the social dimension of evolution to give us a handle on understanding the evolution of complexity.All of this is unknown to the public and is presented here for what it is - Evolution's Quiet Revolution.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1521226725
• ISBN13: 9781521226728
• Release Date: May 2017
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 91 Pages
• Weight: 0.34 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.2" x 5.0"