Self-referencing cellular automata: A model of the evolution of information control in biological systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel cellular automata model with state-dependent feedback, capturing self-reference and local function regions, offering insights into biological evolution and language development.

Contribution

It extends traditional cellular automata by incorporating self-referential feedback, modeling processes like cell differentiation and language evolution.

Findings

Regions act like conventional automata, enabling multiple functions within one structure.

Distribution of automata rules resembles natural language word distributions.

Self-reference dynamics may be key to understanding evolution and language.

Abstract

Cellular automata have been useful artificial models for exploring how relatively simple rules combined with spatial memory can give rise to complex emergent patterns. Moreover, studying the dynamics of how rules emerge under artificial selection for function has recently become a powerful tool for understanding how evolution can innovate within its genetic rule space. However, conventional cellular automata lack the kind of state feedback that is surely present in natural evolving systems. Each new generation of a population leaves an indelible mark on its environment and thus affects the selective pressures that shape future generations of that population. To model this phenomenon, we have augmented traditional cellular automata with state-dependent feedback. Rather than generating automata executions from an initial condition and a static rule, we introduce mappings which generate iteration rules from the cellular automaton itself. We show that these new automata contain disconnected regions which locally act like conventional automata, thus encapsulating multiple functions into one structure. Consequently, we have provided a new model for processes like cell differentiation. Finally, by studying the size of these regions, we provide additional evidence that the dynamics of self-reference may be critical to understanding the evolution of natural language. In particular, the rules of elementary cellular automata appear to be distributed in the same way as words in the corpus of a natural language.