Inventive processes in nature: from information origin in chemical evolution to technological exhaustion

Abstract

It has been ten years since the 2006 work of Abel and Trevors wherein the cybernetic path of life’s origin was proposed as an alternative to the widely held views of such origin being self-ordering and self-organisation. Cybernetic adaptation is now recognised as a cornerstone of biological and technological evolution and as well as of artificial intelligence (AI) and cognition. It is expected that chemical evolution, preceding biological evolution, will have a cybernetic explanation as well. Among all evolutions, only AI evolutionary computation and cognition are accessible via the scientific method. For biological and technological evolutions, we only have the example of one, while for chemical evolution we have no template at all. The aim of this essay is to look for commonalities in all evolutions and attempt to fill in the missing pieces of the chemical and technological evolutions with knowledge that can be obtained by observing evolutions with a complete record. Types of information – quantum, chemical and functional – are defined, and their roles explained. It is proposed that the temporal survivability of information should be considered as a factor of general evolutionary fitness for all evolutionary adaptations. This study further suggests that because all experimentation spaces are finite they may become exhausted due to convergence towards optimal configurations. Such exhaustion of important experimental areas might reflect the observed decay of technological innovation and economic growth.