Inventive processes in nature: from information origin in chemical evolution to technological exhaustion

Earth Perspectives

Transdisciplinarity Enabled

Table 1 Innovation milestones throughout the evolution of the Earth

Physical information representation	Small organics	Polymers	RNA	DNA	DNA, neural, technological
Algorithm:
Exploration method, Far search	Molecular noisy search	Molecular noisy search	Molecular noisy search, high frequency mutations	Low frequency mutations	Neural experimentation through neural noisy search, numerical mutation operators in AI
Exploitation method, Near search	None	Information addition (polymerisation), horizontal chemical information exchange	Old information addition (polymerisation) + horizontal gene transfer	Old information addition (polymerisation) + horizontal gene transfer + sexual information crossover	Thought experimentation, numerical crossover in AI
Invention diffusion method	Diffusion in liquid solvent	Parallel chemistry, solvent diffusion	Replication, solvent diffusion	Replication by heredity, solvent diffusion	Offspring, industrially manufactured copies
Dominant exergy source	Radiation (UV) + planetary dynamics	UV + some metabolic	UV + metabolic	UV + visible + metabolic	Metabolic (+ nuclear, solar…)

From left to right, small organics primarily based on solar ultraviolet (UV) light and thermal noise are the first carriers of information concerning the first experimental outcomes. The next process, where previously stored information is added in small molecules, involves polymerisation or elongation. RNA is the next major evolutionary step in the information selection method. RNA facilitates horizontal gene transfer and replicates to diffuse information. After the appearance of metabolism, inventions tended to be oriented towards an increasingly elaborated protection schema. A great advance in horizontal information exchange was gained by the invention of sexual DNA reproduction by the systematic crossing of previously known inventions at reduced mutation rates and provided a mechanism against deleterious mutation accumulation (enabling reduced mutations). Moreover, within intelligent, neural beings, inventive processes have arguably ascended to another level, much more advanced than the solely genetic level, into a higher realm of thought experimentation. In humans, perhaps we see an even higher level evolved, that of consciously directed thought experiments