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2015 | Online First | Chapter

The Nucleation of Semantic Information in Prebiotic Matter

Author : Bernd-Olaf Küppers

Published in: Current Topics in Microbiology and Immunology

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

The analysis of the inherent context-dependence of genetic information suggests that there are evolutionary mechanisms which are independent of the processes of environmental adaptation and yet are able to push prebiotic matter towards functional complexity. In this regard, the extension of information space, by random prolongation of the primary structure of biological macromolecules, must have played a decisive role in the origin of life. On the one hand, the extension of information space is tantamount to an increase in the syntactic complexity of potential information carriers, which in turn is a prerequisite for the nucleation and evolution of semantic information. On the other hand, the increase in the dimensionality of information space expands the number of possible pathways of evolutionary optimisation and thereby improves the possible choices that can be made by progressive evolution. Alongside the optimisation of evolutionary optimisation itself, there are principles of evolutionary dynamics that direct the formation of functional order in prebiotic matter. Since these principles are constitutive for the proto-semantics of genetic information, they may be regarded as the elements of the semantic code of evolution.
Footnotes
1
Strictly speaking, the \( x_{i} \left( t \right) \) should be treated as discrete variables, and the differential equations should be replaced by difference equations. However, this would not alter the conclusions in any significant way, so for the sake of simplicity, we retain the continuous variables.
 
2
Strictly, this applies for the case of deterministic selection equations, in which fluctuations in the population are not taken into account.
 
3
That the aperiodicity must be the source for the complexity of living matter was already recognised at the dawn of molecular biology and led to the conjecture that chromosomes must have the structure of an “aperiodic crystal” (Schrödinger 1944).
 
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Metadata
Title
The Nucleation of Semantic Information in Prebiotic Matter
Author
Bernd-Olaf Küppers
Copyright Year
2015
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/82_2015_454