[Next] [Previous] [Up] [Top] [Contents]
7.2 Does complexity increase over evolution?
This is the idea*1 that the result of species interacting will imply that the evolutionary development of one will make the environment of the others more complex as it forms part of the environment. This in turn will make it advantageous (according to something akin to Ashby's law of requisite variety [1]) for it to evolve more complex processes to cope. This in turn puts the `pressure' on the first species and so on.
Such a process would necessarily increase the analytic complexity of the ecology w.r.t. the species, as well as the evolutionary fitness complexity of `predicting' the behaviour w.r.t. the evolutionary processes that led to it. It is unclear, however, if this would increase any of the other versions of complexity.
What is Complexity? - The philosophy of complexity per se with application to some examples in evolution - 14 JUN 95
[Next] [Previous] [Up] [Top] [Contents]
Generated with CERN WebMaker