A Cross-disciplinary Framework for the Description of Contextually Mediated Change

TL;DR

This paper introduces a mathematical framework called CAP that models how entities change over time under various contexts, unifying perspectives across disciplines and analyzing processes like quantum collapse, biological evolution, and cultural change.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel, cross-disciplinary mathematical framework (CAP) for describing context-driven change, linking concepts from quantum physics, biology, and culture.

Findings

Quantum collapse is a limiting case of state change.

Biological evolution preserves structure through coded replication.

Cultural evolution can be understood as a Darwinian process.

Abstract

We present a mathematical framework (referred to as Context-driven Actualization of Potential, or CAP) for describing how entities change over time under the influence of a context. The approach facilitates comparison of change of state of entities studied in different disciplines. Processes are seen to differ according to the degree of nondeterminism, and the degree to which they are sensitive to, internalize, and depend upon a particular context. Our analysis suggests that the dynamical evolution of a quantum entity described by the Schrodinger equation is not fundamentally different from change provoked by a measurement often referred to as collapse, but a limiting case, with only one way to collapse. The biological transition to coded replication is seen as a means of preserving structure in the fact of context-driven change, and sextual replication as a means of increasing potentiality thus enhancing diversity through interaction with context. The framework sheds light on concepts like selection and fitness, reveals how exceptional Darwinian evolution is as a means of 'change of state', and clarifies in what sense culture, and the creative process underlying it, are Darwinian.