Evolutionary Transitions and Top-Down Causation

TL;DR

This paper proposes that major evolutionary transitions are driven by a shift from bottom-up to top-down causation, involving a reversal of information flow, which can be modeled and potentially tested.

Contribution

It introduces the idea that shifts in causal structure underpin key evolutionary transitions and demonstrates this with a logistic growth model and theoretical analysis.

Findings

Reversal in information flow correlates with evolutionary transitions

Logistic growth model shows emergence of collective behavior

Hypothesis suggests new methods for testing causal shifts

Abstract

Top-down causation has been suggested to occur at all scales of biological organization as a mechanism for explaining the hierarchy of structure and causation in living systems. Here we propose that a transition from bottom-up to top-down causation -- mediated by a reversal in the flow of information from lower to higher levels of organization, to that from higher to lower levels of organization -- is a driving force for most major evolutionary transitions. We suggest that many major evolutionary transitions might therefore be marked by a transition in causal structure. We use logistic growth as a toy model for demonstrating how such a transition can drive the emergence of collective behavior in replicative systems. We then outline how this scenario may have played out in those major evolutionary transitions in which new, higher levels of organization emerged, and propose possible methods via which our hypothesis might be tested.