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From: ok@cs.mu.oz.au (Richard O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Discovering What Nature Wants
Keywords: Punctuated Equilibrium
Message-ID: <2595@munnari.oz.au>
Date: 31 Oct 89 02:33:54 GMT
References: <357@massey.ac.nz> <2376@munnari.oz.au> <2394@uceng.UC.EDU> <76548@linus.UUCP>
Sender: news@cs.mu.oz.au
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In article <76548@linus.UUCP>, bwk@mbunix.mitre.org (Barry W. Kort) writes:
> Nature, being a System in which "the Outputs are shorted to the Inputs,"
> tends toward a Fixed Point (which we may call Omega).  The Omega point
> is the limit point of a succession of semi-stable points.  
> 
> This view is consonant with the Post-Darwinian notion of
> Punctuated Equilibrium.

Given that Genetic Algorithms are respectable these days, this may
possibly have some tenuous connection with AI.  However...

"The theory of _punctuated equilibria_ (Eldredge and Gould, 1972) sees
 species as reproductive communities with beginnings, histories, and
 terminations.  Stasis within species facilitates recognition and
 argues against the model that species can be divided into chronologically
 successive lineage segments.  Eldredge and Gould (1972) moreover take the
 causal argument a step further, maintaining that _adaptive change in
 general only occurs in conjunction with speciation_, _i.e. the development
 of reproductive discontinuities._  In light of the distinction between
 economic and reproductive attributes as outlined in this book, this is
 to say that _economic change is unlikely to accrue to any significant
 degree without reproductive change_.
" Niles Eldredge, "Macro-Evolutionary Dynamics", p207.

_That_ is what punctuated equilibrium is all about, according to one of
the people who thought of it.  What it has to do with Omega points or
grandiose spiels about Nature escapes me; certainly Eldredge and Gould
do not claim to see any "limit point" in it.