Paper/Life as Evolving Software

Chaitin, Gregory (February 24, 2012). "Life as Evolving Software" (PDF). local page: INBIOSA. 

Introdution to this paper(Excerpts)

For many years we have been disturbed by the fact that there is no fundamental mathematical theory inspired by Darwin’s theory of evolution [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]. This is the fourth paper in a series [10, 11, 12] attempting to create such a theory. In a previous paper [10] we did not yet have a workable mathematical frame- work: We were able to prove two not very impressive theorems, and then the way forward was blocked. Now we have what appears to be a good mathemat- ical framework, and have been able to prove a number of theorems. Things are starting to work, things are starting to get interesting, and there are many technical questions, many open problems, to work on. So this is a working paper, a progress report, intended to promote interest in the field and get others to participate in the research. There is much to be done. In order to present the ideas as clearly as possible and not get bogged down in technical details, the material is presented more like a physics paper than a math paper. Estimates are at times rather sloppy. We are trying to get an idea of what is going on. The arguments concerning the basic math framework are however very precise; that part is done more or less like a math paper.

Notes on this paper

This paper was referenced by the following white paper