Entrenchment as a Theoretical Tool in Evolutionary Developmental Biology

Mesoudi et al.'s new synthesis for cultural evolution closely parallels the evolutionary synthesis of Neo-Darwinism. It too draws inspiration from population genetics, recruits other fields, and, unfortunately, also ignores development. Enculturation involves many serially acquired skills and dependencies that allow us to build a rich cumulative culture. The newer synthesis, evolutionary developmental biology, provides a key tool, generative entrenchment, to analyze them.

This article aims to draw a connection between organismic evolution and machine learning as recursive optimization processes. Optimization of complex systems presupposes certain forms or designs of the input-output functions. Recent literatures in evolutionary developmental biology have discussed various design features of the genotype-phenotype mapping, including neardecomposability, generative entrenchment, standardization, plasticity, canalization, and scaffolding as means to solve complex adaptive problems through recursive evolution. I point out similar problems and/or techniques exist in the machine learning literature, and sketch some common features in these two distinct fields.

I. INTRODUCTION 1. Myths of LaPlacean Omniscience Realism for Limited Beings in a Rich Messy World Social Natures Heuristics as Adaptations for Real World Nature as Backwoods Mechanic and Used-Parts Dealer Error and Change Organization and Aims of This Book 2. Normative Idealizations versus Metabolism of Error Inadequacies of Our Normative Idealizations Satisficing, Heuristics, and Possible Behavior for Real Agents The Productive Use of Error-Prone Procedures 3. Toward a Philosophy for Limited Beings The Stance and Outlook of a Scientifically Informed Philosophy of Science Ceteris Paribus, Complexity, and Philosophical Method Our Present and Future Naturalistic Philosophical Methods II. PROBLEM-SOLVING STRATEGIES FOR COMPLEX SYSTEMS 4. Robustness, Reliability, and Overdetermination Common Features of Concepts of Robustness Robustness and Structure of Theories Robustness, Testability, and Nature of Theoretical Terms Robustness, Redundancy, and Discovery Robustness, Objectification, and Realism Robustness and Levels of Organization Heuristics and Robustness Robustness, Independence, and Pseudo-Robustness: A Case Study 5. Heuristics and Study of Human Behavior Heuristics Reductionist Research Strategies and Their An Example of Reductionist Biases: Models of Group Selection Heuristics Can Hide Their Tracks Two Strategies for Correcting Reductionist The Importance of Heuristics in Study of Human Behavior 6. False Models as Means to Truer Theories Even Best Models Have Biases The Concept of a Neutral How Models Can Misrepresent Twelve Things To Do with False Models Background of Debate over Mapping in Genetics Castle's Attack on Linear Linkage Model Muller's Data and Haldane Mapping Function Muller's Two-Dimensional Arguments against Castle Multiply-Counterfactual Uses of False Models False Models Can Provide New Predictive Tests Highlighting Features of a Preferred Model False Models and Adaptive Design Arguments Summary and Conclusions 7. Robustness and Entrenchment: How Contingent Becomes Necessary Generative Entrenchment and Architecture of Adaptive Design Generative Systems Come To Dominate in Evolutionary Processes Resistance to Foundational Revisions Bootstrapping Feedbacks: Differential Dependencies and Stable Generators Implications of Generative Entrenchment Generative Entrenchment and Robustness Conclusion 8. Lewontin's Evidence (That There Isn't Any) Is Evidence Impotent, or Just Inconstant? False Models as Means to Truer Theories Narrative Accounts and Theory as Montage III. REDUCTIONISM(S) IN PRACTICE 9. Complexity and Organization Reductionism and Analysis of Complex Systems Complexity Evolution, Complexity, and Organization Complexity and Localization of Function 10. The Ontology of Complex Systems: Levels of Organization, Perspectives, and Causal Thickets Robustness and Reality Levels of Organization Perspectives: A Preliminary Characterization Causal Thickets 11. Reductive Explanation: A Functional Account Two Kinds of Rational Reconstruction Successional versus Inter-Level Reduction Levels of Organization and Co-Evolution and Development of Interlevel Theories Two Views of Explanation: Major Factors and Mechanisms versus Laws and Deductive Completeness Levels of Organization and Explanatory Costs and Benefits An Example: The Assumption of the Purity of Gametes in Heterozygote Identificatory Hypotheses as Tools in Search for Explanations Appendix: Modifications Appropriate to a Cost-Benefit Version of Salmon's Account of Explanation 12. Emergence as Non-Aggregativity and of Reductionism(s) Reduction and Emergence Aggregativity Perspectival, Contextual, and Representational Complexities or, Ain't Quite So Simple as That! Adaptation to Fine- and Coarse-Grained Environments: Derivational Paradoxes for a Formal Account of Aggregativity Aggregativity and Dimensionality Aggregativity as a Heuristic for Evaluating Decompositions, and Our Concepts of Natural Kinds Reductionisms and Revisited IV. ENGINEERING AN EVOLUTIONARY VIEW OF SCIENCE 13. Epilogue: On Softening of Hard Sciences From Straw-Man Reductionist to Lover of Complexity Messiness in State-of-the-Art Theoretical Physics Hidden Elegance and Revelations in Run-of-the-Mill Applied Science Pure versus Applied Science, and What Difference Should It Make? Hortatory Closure Appendix A. Important Properties of Heuristics Appendix B. Common Reductionistic Heuristics Appendix C. Glossary of Key Concepts and Assumptions Appendix D. A Panoply of LaPlacean and Leibnizian Demons Notes Bibliography Credits Index

Articulating Babel: An approach to cultural evolution

The innate-acquired distinction has long been a point of connection between evolutionary questions and developmental questions. It is also one of our oldest conceptual tools, dating back at least to the time of Plato. Further, it hs been broadly applied not just in development biology, animal ethology, and evolutionary theory, but also in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of science, cognitive psychology, linguistics, neurophysiology and in theories about the nature and evolution of human sociality, culture, and morality. As befits any concept which has cast such a broad and deep shadow, it has at some times and places been highly honored and at others most deeply dishonored. It has been viewed as an agent of progress and of stagnation, of clarity and of confusion, and of liberation and of bondage.

Nancy Easterlin, A Biocultural Approach to Literary Theory and Interpretation (Johns Hopkins, 2012) xi + 315 $65.00 Nancy Easterlin is an important voice in the emerging dialogue about evolutionary theory and cognitive brain science and their relevance to the study and interpretation of literature. A Biocultural Approach to Literary Theory and Interpretation is major contribution to that dialogue; in fact, Easterlin sets out new that will prove important to readers and writers who believe that Darwinian science has great deal to offer the understanding of literary texts, their origins and effects. Easterlin's work lies at the intersection between materialist critiques of nature--evolutionary, cognitive, ecological--and the theoretical approach to literary works. Among the goals: to achieve new and useful mode of reading. Easterlin begins by proposing utility as key to literary value, and she notes that literature is a thing made for human use, like an airplane or soup pot or belt (ix). Her focus, she continues, is not on the quantitative research championed by some Darwinian but rather on the idea that and cultural evolution together highlight the centrality of meaning-making processes for our species and, by extension, provide ample justification for interpretation as the core aim of our discipline (6). This claim is fairly grand, but Easterlin sets out her terms and her methods in way that justifies the foundational--and fundamental--elements of her argument: Whether the arts evolved primarily out of metaphysical needs, or within the overlapping activities of ritual and play, the message seems fairly clear as we look to the anthropological record: in the line connecting human prehistory and human history the arts exhibit enduring importance (33). For Easterlin, critics need to read as aesthetically and rhetorically attuned scholars of the works they know and care about, but they also need to interpret these works with recognition of their biological and cultural embeddedness. Literature and the arts are important, Easterlin maintains, because they represent crucial and often repeated outgrowth of certain evolutionary developments within the species, and because they help people link central aspects of their lived experience that are not always clearly connected. In this regard, Easterlin's goal is not to give a model that can be [slapped] down onto unsuspecting texts; instead, her goal is to offer creative enterprise, flexible and dynamic criticism that is rational and judicious in Matthew Arnold's sense while never forgetting the awe or love of beauty that draws us to art and maybe even toward the sciences that some of us want to use to help elucidate (38). In this regard, literary interpretation is about patience, and feeling and love, not just about knowing, and deciphering, and comprehending. Dulce et utile, Horace said, but the sweet can often be useful, and the useful can often be ever so sweet. Trying to understand these texts is not easy; Easterlin refers to the biologist E. O. Wilson's important claim about complexity: Biology is almost unimaginably more complex than physics, and the arts equivalently more complex than (Consilience 67). Such sweeping claim should not intimidate literary critics, however; it is reminder how much valuable work remains to be done. After defining what biocultural criticism might look like, Easterlin applies her perspective to new historical version of narrative, aesthetics, and ideology, to cognitive and place-based version of ecocriticism, to cognitive science as mental ecology, and to an evolutionary-feminist reading of sex, mating and power. This structure accounts for part of the richness and complexity of A Biocultural Approach to Literary Theory and Interpretation. By applying her approach to number of different modes and methods of reading, she creates sense of how central her culture + biology (her Darwin + society) approach is to the practices in which literary critics are already engaged. …

HyperCell: A Bio-inspired Design Framework for Real-time Interactive Architectures

Objective : to systematize methodological foundations and to construct a conceptual model of information modeling technology as a basis for its full-fledged implementation with a view of improving the efficiency of investment and construction activities. Methods : review of information sources on the strategy of digital transformation of the construction industry; study of the regulatory system and retrospective analysis of the evolution of information modeling technology; systematization of information on its maturity levels; comparative analysis of analytical reviews and reports of leading consulting companies. Results: the essence of various semantic aspects of technology at the stages of its evolutionary development is investigated, the actual representation of information modeling technology is identified, a conceptual model is developed, and the features of technology from the viewpoint of process, technological and effective approaches are highlighted. The structural elements of the information model are determined, the dynamic processes of formation and progressive transformation of its components are described. The assessment of the current level of technology maturity in the Russian construction industry is carried out based on the Bew–Richards model; the importance of its full integration into the life cycle management system of the capital construction project to improve the efficiency of each stage of the investment and construction project implementation is substantiated. Scientific novelty : a modern interpretation of information modeling technology is presented, a conceptual model is developed on the basis of an integrated approach and its key elements are identified. Practical significance : the main provisions of the article and the developed conceptual model can be used by the subjects of the architectural and construction industry in developing a digital transformation strategy based on information modeling technology, in scientific research of theoretical and practical aspects of technology application, as well as in the educational process in the training of specialists in the construction industry.

Smart structure systems and smart materials technologies have a vital role in many types of manufacturing in this century. Various construction materials can considerably improve functioning. Smart Materials have a vital role in the evolution of building technology. These materials are part of a smart structural system that can detect its surroundings and perform like living systems. The study state and recognize the relation between adaptive structure system and construction materials “smart concrete” in the construction scope through analysis, new techniques and innovative methods. The study’s goal is to explore how these two professions are inextricably linked, developing ever more symbiotic as time goes on. The paper presented the various categories of smart structure systems and materials that have unique properties. Furthermore, the paper revealed the effective behavior of smart materials that take into consideration at every level of design progression of civil engineering.KeywordsAdaptive systemSmart materialsSmart concrete

In a comparison of samples of wood thrush song recorded from southern New York State and coastal South Carolina, the following results demonstrate the striking similarity of song in these widely separated areas: (1) Of 25 discrete song types defined for the New York sample, 19 were found in South Carolina, (2) the relative abundances of the different song types were significantly correlated in two samples, and (3) according to a detailed quantitative analysis, the structure of the most common song type was the same in the two samples. Subtle differences did occur between the two samples. Although some of these differences may have been due merely to random sampling error, one difference-the absence of six song types from the South Carolina sample-could not be dismissed in this way. This result indicates that some song types are not widely distributed. Another difference between the two samples had to do specifically with one of the song types absent from South Carolina. In the South Carolina sample were six unclassified songs that, although structurally diverse, all had certain features in common with the missing type and therefore may be related to it by cultural evolution.

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Mobile Location Based Services (MLBS) have been in operation since the 1970s. Conceived initially for military use, the Global Positioning System technology was later released to the world for other applications. As usage of the technology increased, mobile network points, developed by mobile service operators, supplemented its usage in various applications of MLBS. This chapter charts the trajectory of MLBS applications in the mass market, afforded by the evolution of technology, digital, and mobility cultures. Assimilating various MLBS classifications, it then situates examples into four quadrants according to the measures of user-position or device-position focus, and alert-aware or active-aware applications. The privacy implications of MLBS are captured on the economic, social, and political fronts, and its future is discussed.

Evolutionary trends and development of constructed wetland coupled microbial fuel cell: A decade of development.

With the increasing usage of in-vehicle systems, drivers have to frequently perceive and respond to messages from these in-vehicle systems. In addition, previous studies have found that the interval between the messages (arrival rate) presented to a driver becomes one of the factors affecting driver workload. To reduce driver workload, researchers on adaptive workload-management systems have found that adding extra delay time into the interval of messages can significantly reduce driver workload. However, it is unknown whether this extra delay time added by an adaptive workload-management system will increase the performance time of drivers or not. To answer this important question, using closed-form mathematical equations, the current work quantifies human performance time (total task completion time and reaction time of each task) when there are two serial processing stages in the human cognitive system. The mathematical model developed in this work provides solutions of the optimal interval of messages that generate the lowest workload without deteriorating drivers' performance time to respond to multiple messages from in-vehicle systems. This is one of a few closed-form deterministic mathematical models with analytic solutions that can predict average reaction time when there are two multiple serial stages in the cognitive system in dual tasks. With relatively simple equations, the mathematical model can still capture the major patterns of simulation results with stochastic properties and human behavioral experimental results. The mathematical equations developed in this study can be used in the design of adaptive workload-management systems and other driver assistance systems.

Subtle cultural differences in the childbirth experience for expatriate Japanese couples living in southeast Michigan can sometimes cause conflicts between them and American health caregivers. The purpose of this study was to examine Japanese couples' perceptions and experiences of prenatal care and childbirth in a region of the United States, and to explore the implications for providing culturally competent care. In this qualitative study, in-depth interviews of 11 Japanese couples (n = 22) were conducted at an outpatient primary care clinic in southeast Michigan by a team of researchers fluent in the Japanese language and knowledgeable about the culture. Participants also completed a short questionnaire. The major themes that emerged comprised perceptions related to a language barrier, ultrasonography, prenatal vitamin supplementation, episiotomy, epidural anesthesia, and practitioner-patient relationship. Throughout these six themes it was evident that Japanese health care professionals had difficulty accepting health care that was different from the care provided in their home country. The most striking finding of this study was the difficulty for health caregivers to provide culturally competent care. Although the program has strongly invested in health professionals and support staff who were fluent in Japanese and knowledgeable about Japanese culture, conflicts still occurred.