On adaptation: A reduction of the Kauffman-Levin model to a problem in graph theory and its consequences [Book Review]

Biology and Philosophy 5 (2):127-148 (1990)
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Abstract

It is shown that complex adaptations are best modelled as discrete processes represented on directed weighted graphs. Such a representation captures the idea that problems of adaptation in evolutionary biology are problems in a discrete space, something that the conventional representations using continuous adaptive landscapes does not. Further, this representation allows the utilization of well-known algorithms for the computation of several biologically interesting results such as the accessibility of one allele from another by a specified number of point mutations, the accessibility of alleles at a local maximum of fitness, the accessibility of the allele with the globally maximum fitness, etc. A reduction of a model due to Kauffman and Levin to such a representation is explicitly carried out and it is shown how this reduction clarifies the biological questions that are of interest.

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Citations of this work

How development may direct evolution.Justin Garson, Linton Wang & Sahotra Sarkar - 2003 - Biology and Philosophy 18 (2):353-370.

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References found in this work

Exaptation–A missing term in the science of form.Stephen Jay Gould & Elisabeth S. Vrba - 1998 - In David L. Hull & Michael Ruse, The philosophy of biology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Teleology and the logical structure of function statements.William C. Wimsatt - 1972 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 3 (1):1-80.

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