Triadic Conceptual Structure of the Maximum Entropy Approach to Evolution

TL;DR

This paper introduces a triadic conceptual framework combining Peircean semiotics and maximum entropy principles to analyze evolution as a physical process driven by multiple causality types, offering a semiotic perspective on thermodynamics.

Contribution

It proposes a novel triadic diagrammatic approach integrating Peircean signs with maximum entropy methods, linking causality types and thermodynamics in evolutionary theory.

Findings

Triadic structures involve efficient, formal, and final causality.

Application to autocatalytic cycles as primordial life patterns.

Evolution as a physical expression of the Second Law.

Abstract

Many problems in evolutionary theory are cast in dyadic terms, such as the polar oppositions of organism and environment. We argue that a triadic conceptual structure offers an alternative perspective under which the information generating role of evolution as a physical process can be analyzed, and propose a new diagrammatic approach. Peirce's natural philosophy was deeply influenced by his reception of both Darwin's theory and thermodynamics. Thus, we elaborate on a new synthesis which puts together his theory of signs and modern Maximum Entropy approaches to evolution. Following recent contributions to the naturalization of Peircean semiosis, we show that triadic structures involve the conjunction of three different kinds of causality, efficient, formal and final. We apply this on Ulanowicz's analysis of autocatalytic cycles as primordial patterns of life. This paves the way for a semiotic view of thermodynamics which is built on the idea that Peircean interpretants are systems of physical inference devices evolving under natural selection. In this view, the principles of Maximum Entropy, Maximum Power, and Maximum Entropy Production work together to drive the emergence of information carrying structures, which at the same time maximize information capacity as well as the gradients of energy flows, such that ultimately, contrary to Schroedinger's seminal contribution, the evolutionary process is seen to be a physical expression of the Second Law.