{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/formal-definitions-of-unbounded-evolution-and","title":"Formal Definitions of Unbounded Evolution and Innovation Reveal Universal Mechanisms for Open-Ended Evolution in Dynamical Systems","arxiv_id":"1607.01750","date":"2016-07-06","proceeding":null,"authors":["Alyssa M Adams","Hector Zenil","Paul CW Davies","Sara I. Walker"],"abstract":"Open-ended evolution (OEE) is relevant to a variety of biological, artificial\nand technological systems, but has been challenging to reproduce in silico.\nMost theoretical efforts focus on key aspects of open-ended evolution as it\nappears in biology. We recast the problem as a more general one in dynamical\nsystems theory, providing simple criteria for open-ended evolution based on two\nhallmark features: unbounded evolution and innovation. We define unbounded\nevolution as patterns that are non-repeating within the expected Poincare\nrecurrence time of an equivalent isolated system, and innovation as\ntrajectories not observed in isolated systems. As a case study, we implement\nnovel variants of cellular automata (CA) in which the update rules are allowed\nto vary with time in three alternative ways. Each is capable of generating\nconditions for open-ended evolution, but vary in their ability to do so. We\nfind that state-dependent dynamics, widely regarded as a hallmark of life,\nstatistically out-performs other candidate mechanisms, and is the only\nmechanism to produce open-ended evolution in a scalable manner, essential to\nthe notion of ongoing evolution. This analysis suggests a new framework for\nunifying mechanisms for generating OEE with features distinctive to life and\nits artifacts, with broad applicability to biological and artificial systems.","url_abs":"http://arxiv.org/abs/1607.01750v2","url_pdf":"http://arxiv.org/pdf/1607.01750v2.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"formal-definitions-of-unbounded-evolution-and","repo_url":"https://github.com/alyssa-adams/OEE_Project","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":0,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":null,"atlas_url":null,"mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}