Halley Julianne D, Winkler David A
CSIRO Molecular and Health Technologies, Private Bag 10, Clayton South MDC 3169, Australia.
Biosystems. 2008 May;92(2):148-58. doi: 10.1016/j.biosystems.2008.01.005. Epub 2008 Feb 2.
We argue that critical-like dynamics self-organize relatively easily in non-equilibrium systems, and that in biological systems such dynamics serve as templates upon which natural selection builds further elaborations. These critical-like states can be modified by natural selection in two fundamental ways, reflecting the selective advantage (if any) of heritable variations either among avalanche participants or among whole systems. First, reproducing (avalanching) units can differentiate, as units adopt systematic behavioural variations. Second, whole systems that are exposed to natural selection can become increasingly or decreasingly critical. We suggest that these interactions between SOC-like dynamics and natural selection have profound consequences for biological systems because they could have facilitated the evolution of division of labour, compartmentalization and computation, key features of biological systems. The logical conclusion of these ideas is that the fractal geometry of nature is anything but coincidental, and that natural selection is itself a fractal process, occurring on many temporal and spatial scales.
我们认为，类似临界的动力学在非平衡系统中相对容易自组织形成，并且在生物系统中，此类动力学充当模板，自然选择在此基础上进一步构建更为复杂的结构。这些类似临界的状态可通过自然选择以两种基本方式进行修改，这反映了在雪崩参与者之间或整个系统之间可遗传变异的选择优势（若有）。首先，繁殖（雪崩式）单元可以分化，因为单元会采用系统性的行为变异。其次，暴露于自然选择的整个系统可能会变得越来越临界或越来越不临界。我们认为，这种类似自组织临界性的动力学与自然选择之间的相互作用对生物系统具有深远影响，因为它们可能促进了分工、区室化和计算的进化，而这些是生物系统的关键特征。这些观点的逻辑结论是，自然的分形几何绝非偶然，而且自然选择本身就是一个分形过程，发生在许多时间和空间尺度上。
