I like the idea of "Quantum Evolution"
http://wiki.cas-group.net/index.php?title=Quantum_Evolution
Why has nobody tried to combine Darwin and Einstein?
I think this is a wonderful idea. If we treat particles -
esp. fermions - as an apdative unit, then a particle would
be a kind of evolutionary species, and a vertex becomes
a speciation event. Instead of a Feynman diagram we
would have a phylogenetic tree of particles.
I am not sure how bosons (the force carriers responsible
for interaction) and fermions (the matter carriers which
obey the Pauli exclusion principle) fit into this picture, but
maybe a boson would roughly correspond to a stem cell,
because it is a basic unit of replication which replicates
itself while moving through space-time, and a whole
organism or species to fermions, which cover a certain niche
in the ecology of cosmic evolution (the real reason for the
Pauli exclusion principle?).
If the universe is really evolutionary on the deepest
level, then there is an important lesson to learn from
the evolution of complex systems: the most abundant,
primitive and tiniest elements are often the oldest
and most fundamental ones. For example algae and bacteria
are countless, tiny and primitive, but they belong to
the most ancient life-forms on earth. Thus the smallest
particles, the insignificant neutrinos with their strange
inclination to oscillate, are perhaps more important than
we think, exactly because they interact only very weakly
with normal matter.
Therefore I think if there is something revolutionary
to discover, it is more likely the Neutrino than the
Higgs particle which will make the really big headlines,
even if this experiment turns out to be false.
-J.
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