Category: Uncategorized

NEW THINKING. "Why can't computers program themselves? Why can't there be some combination of Genetic Algorithms, Inductive Logic Programming and the vast amounts of open source code as data, that can deduce the functions of code? Based on the patterns of programming, we should be able to generate programs based on a requirement as specified by a very high level language." https://lnkd.in/d8uRh9a View in LinkedIn

CONVERGENCE EXAMPLE. "For example, tunicates such as the colonial sea squirts (Botryllus spp.) can reproduce both sexually, through egg fertilization followed by embryonic and larval development, and asexually, from a bud, and without intervening larvae: the full-grown animals are nevertheless very similar in gross anatomy and in many details of structure." http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1540/631.short View in LinkedIn

"ORDER IS NOT SUFFICIENT. What is required, is something much more complex. It is order entering upon novelty; so that the massiveness of order does not degenerate into mere repetition; and so that the novelty is always reflected upon a background of system." (A. N. Whitehead on “Ideal Opposites” in Process and Reality.) https://lnkd.in/dMkrh4P View in LinkedIn

PHENOTYPIC CONVERGENCE. "If a complex life cycle presents a number of alternative phenotypes (through divergent developmental pathways), this implies that at some point, distinct alternative developmental routes must converge towards the same phenotype." http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1540/631.short View in LinkedIn

"EMERGENT COMPUTING is both a result of the unanticipated interplay of parts of an executable object and a way of modeling the appearance of putatively emergent properties." https://lnkd.in/dPyhGnF View in LinkedIn

SWITCH FIXATION. "We can expect that even after genetic fixation of a developmental switch, its expression may still depend on the availability of generic cues. This is what is found in many embryonic and post-embryonic developmental sequences, when examining conspecific larvae exposed to different environmental cues, or through comparisons of the larvae of closely related species." http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1540/631.short View in LinkedIn

WHAT-A-SENTENCE. "If an animal's complex life cycle derives from diachronic fixation of the alternative phenotypes originally expressed as polyphenisms, this historical continuity is likely to have left an imprint in the internal mechanisms that mediate the most conspicuous developmental changes, as at metamorphosis." http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1540/631.short View in LinkedIn

RARE REVERSIBILITY. "Also, the probability that this sequence will occasionally reverse will probably vanish soon, as demonstrated by the life cycles of most animal species. Exceptions to this rule are indeed extremely rare. Best known is the case of the hydrozoan Turritopsis nutricula, where a medusa, under certain conditions, is able to revert to a polyp." http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1540/631.short View in LinkedIn

TEMPORAL SEQUENCES. "In this way, a series of different, sequentially realized alternative phenotypes compatible with the animal's genome, but individually expressed in the presence of different transcription patterns, will gradually evolve towards a strictly controlled temporal sequence of developmental stages." http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1540/631.short View in LinkedIn

CONSERVED DEVELOPMENTAL SEQUENCES. "The more the expression of a specific phenotype falls under genetic control, the more it is likely to be expressed. In turn, its expression is likely to facilitate also the expression of other specific phenotypes in conserved developmental sequence." http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1540/631.short View in LinkedIn