To a Mathematical Theory of Evolution and Biological Creativity

We present an information-theoretic analysis of Darwin’s theory of evolution, modeled as a hill-climbing algorithm on a tness landscape. Our space of possible organisms consists of computer programs, which are subjected to random mutations. We study the random walk of increasing tness made by a single mutating organism. In two dierent models we are able to show that evolution will occur and to characterize the rate of evolutionary progress, i.e., the rate of biological creativity.

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