Innovation: an emerging focus from cells to societies

Abstract

Innovations are generally unexpected, often spectacular changes in phenotypes and ecological functions. The contributions to this theme issue are the latest conceptual, theoretical and experimental developments, addressing how ecology, environment, ontogeny and evolution are central to understanding the complexity of the processes underlying innovations. Here, we set the stage by introducing and defining key terms relating to innovation and discuss their relevance to biological, cultural and technological change. Discovering how the generation and transmission of novel biological information, environmental interactions and selective evolutionary processes contribute to innovation as an ecosystem will shed light on how the dominant features across life come to be, generalize to social, cultural and technological evolution, and have applications in the health sciences and sustainability. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Process and pattern in innovations from cells to societies’.

Innovation and social transmission in experimental micro-societies: exploring the scope of cumulative culture in young children

“…For objective clarity we treated each first success at opening a specific exit among the 16 available in the SW as such an invention, and at successive levels in the SW these required the invention of different kinds of tool use and novelties in how to apply these to exits familiar from other levels (as in fashioning longer tools for L3 and hook tools for L4). We think this a satisfactory approach insofar as the term 'invention' is thus technically and clearly defined in the context of our study, and the present journal issue [11]. However, calling actions like using a finger to press down the trapdoor at L1 'invention' may seem to over-dignify it in comparison to the word's everyday meaning and cultural instances like the invention of light bulbs and cyclotrons.…”

“…The existence of such traditions depends upon two very different but complementary processes: first, some behavioural novelty must be created; then it must be repeatedly transmitted, diffusing amongst one or more populations [4,[9][10][11]. Legare and Nielsen [12] called these two contrasting processes -novel invention, and copying others -the 'dual engines' of culture.…”

Evolutionary Innovations and Where to Find Them: Routes to Open-Ended Evolution in Natural and Artificial Systems

“…I will call this mode of construction a compositional system. 19 Examples from biology range from the construction of a protein from amino acids drawn from a set of 20 different types, to the construction of an termite colony from termites drawn from a set of different castes. Examples from ALife include the construction of a neural network controller from a given number of neurons and connections.…”

“…We further discuss this distinction at the end of the paper. 19 I use the term compositional rather than Boden's [5] combinational to emphasise that the size of structures may increase, and that the specific arrangement and connections between components might be important. compositional physics.…”

An Overview of Open-Ended Evolution: Editorial Introduction to the Open-Ended Evolution II Special Issue

“…Not surprisingly, research on open-ended evolution in artificial life has echoes in the biological literature of evolutionary innovation. A good overview of recent work on this topic is provided by Hochberg et al in the Introduction to a theme issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society on "Process and pattern in innovations from cells to societies" [19]. Hochberg and colleagues state that their ultimate goal is to "understand the central features that drive innovation in all living systems [encompassing biology, culture, and technology], paving the way for a general theory" [19, p. 13].…”