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Hello Patrick! Long time no see. Life has me busy. Still on the crevo threads I see. How are things fairing for you?

Now for something relating to the thread..

I've been going over chaos theory lately, and wondering how it might apply with evolution (on the macro side of things). Life is basically a chaotic system (might be a weak or strong one, but it is an indirect feedback system, though the denser the system, the higher the error feedback becomes, and the higher the rate of change in the system develops). I've come up with a couple applications to apply to life systems from chaotic boundries.

One such is the cusp catastrophe, a chaotic mechanism which causes a system which appears to be moving in one direction (even linear) to spontaneously shift directions. One example of this could be boiling water, which will spontaneously organize into convection cells when heated. What does this have to do with evolution? I propose the mechanism to give both an explination for very fast changes in a small population (as the organisms reach some critical evolution event, they might hit a chaotic boundry and get shot off in another direction very quickly, making the evolution non-linear), and as a possible boundry for moving from micro to macro evolution.

Why the later? Micro to macro evolution is suggested to be a linear process in which small steps lead simply to larger steps (in macro), and enough of those would eventually lead to the inevitable much larger steps (linear projections of micro evolution), without boundry. The flaw here is, I believe, that the small steps of micro evolution will necessarily lead to the much larger steps of macro evolution via linear projection of the micro evolution mechanism. The reason I believe it may be flawed is because life is a chaotic system, and as such, it may contain chaotic boundries which would break the linear projection of micro to macro (or somewhere along the line), thus giving a possible 'wall' to how far evolution can go, or at least set up a non-linear pathway of evolution somewhere down the line. Either way interrupts the assumed linear progression of micro to macro (though it could be for good or bad, possibly causing assumed projects to be incorrect).

Your thoughts?

-The Hajman-