presented at the 15th International Joseph A. Schumpeter Society Conference, July, 28, 2014, Jena, Germany
Evolution Processes Information – Linking the Theory of Evolution and Information Theory
ABSTRACT
The article reformulates evolutionary fitness as informatio n processes. This change s our understanding of evolution ary change , as it allows its formal express ion as a communication process between the evolving system and its environment. Similar to how a communication process reveals a communicated message among possible messages, evolution reveals the surviving fittest member of a population. The amount of uncertainty reduced by evolution is quantified by ‘negentropy’ , which turns into relative entropy and mutual information in the general cases . B its and bytes become a quantifiable ingredient of evolutionary growth. M ore information between the population and its environment implies greater fitness. Information also turns out to be the link between the distinct population types in space and the unf olding environment al patterns in time.
