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TWO HISTORIES. "Life is a dynamic process, and organismal structures disclose the history of the two principal levels of biological change: evolutionary and developmental. Vestiges (from the Latin vestigium, for footprint) reveal traces of prior states. Like actual footprints, vestiges offer glimpses of what was once there but is no longer present. In biological terms, they reveal former evolutionary and developmental conditions, and in this way they offer valuable keys to unlock the past." http://evolution-outreach.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-014-0012-5 View in LinkedIn

ANALOG OR DIGITAL. "The chicken-or-egg problem, as traditionally posed, thus amounts to a debate of whether analogue or digital hardware came first." http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/79/20120869.short View in LinkedIn

DEEP VESTIGIAL STRUCTURES. "Vestigial features of humans and other organisms are well known and have long been used as key evidence for evolution. Such features include not only anatomical structures but also physiological processes, biochemical reactions, and even behaviors." Not to mention transposons derived from ancient viruses that dominate genomes. http://evolution-outreach.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-014-0012-5 View in LinkedIn

CHICKENS & EGGS. "A longstanding debate—often dubbed the chicken or the egg problem—is which came first, genetic heredity or metabolism? A conundrum arises because neither can operate without the other in contemporary life, where the duality is manifested via the genome–proteome systems." http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/79/20120869.short View in LinkedIn

DARWIN ON VESTIGES. "Along with paleontological evidence from the fossil record and biogeographic evidence from species distributions, Darwin turned, naturally, to comparative anatomy, citing such well-known topics as homologous and analogous (convergent) features and similarities in skeletons and patterns of embryonic development. Darwin cited another prominent finding of comparative anatomy as an obvious line of evidence for evolution: vestigial features." http://evolution-outreach.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12052-014-0012-5 View in LinkedIn

GREY ZONE SHIFT. "We therefore identify the transition from non-life to life with a fundamental shift in the causal structure of the system, specifically a transition to a state in which algorithmic information gains direct, context-dependent, causal efficacy over matter." http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/79/20120869.short View in LinkedIn

"PROGRESSIVE NOTIONS of natural philosophy and theology were simmering in Victorian England when, in 1844, the scientific establishment was rocked by the anonymous publication of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (Chambers [1844]). This best-selling book presented, in a highly accessible format, then-radical ideas on cosmic and biological evolution." https://lnkd.in/e5Q9TsW View in LinkedIn

LIFE REDEFINED. "We postulate that it is the transition to context-dependent causation—mediated by the onset of information control—that is the key defining characteristic of life." http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/79/20120869.short View in LinkedIn

CAUSAL EFFICACY. "To be explicit, biological information is distinctive because it possesses a type of causal efficacy —it is the information that determines the current state and hence the dynamics (and therefore also the future state(s)." http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/79/20120869.short View in LinkedIn

INFORMATION AS A PROPERTY. "The central position of information in biology is not itself especially new or radical. What is often sidestepped, however, is the fact that in biological systems information is not merely a way to label states, but a property of the system." http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/79/20120869.short View in LinkedIn