1-2 August 2000 - Reed College, Portland, Oregon, USA
WORKSHOP AIMS
As workers in Artifical Life know well, the capacity to evolve ``good" solutions is not an automatic by-product of the use of evolutionary methods. The little understood capacity, observed in the history of evolution of life on earth, to be able to reach ``good" solutions via evolution is called `Evolvability', and we seek to characterize, understand and apply it. This workshop is aimed to bring together researchers from various disciplines to better understand the nature and mechanisms that do or could support evolvability in biology, evolutionary computation, artificial life, software systems and applications.
This EVOLVABILITY WORKSHOP follows upon the growing awareness from academia, industry, and research communities of the importance of a capacity to vary robustly over time or generations in digital and natural systems.
Darwinian evolution characterized by heritable variation and selection is not by itself sufficient to account for the capacity to vary and inherent phenotypic expressions of fitness. Rigidity of genotype-phenotype mappings, as often used in evolutionary computation, constrains the dynamics of evolution to a small space of possible biological or artificial systems. Open-ended evolution is not possible under such constraints. Evolution, by itself, cannot fully explain the advent of genetic systems, the flexible genotype-phenotype mappings, heritable fitness. This presents a challenge both to biologists seeking to understand the capacity of life to evolve and to computer scientists who seek to harness biological-like robustness and openness in the evolution of artificial systems.
Evolvability has been variously defined as the ``genome's ability to produce adaptive variants when acted on by the genetic system'' (Wagner & Altenberg, 1996), as the ``capacity to generate heritable phenotypic variation'' (Kirschner & Gerhart, 1998); and as characterized by ``evolutionary watersheds'' opening the ``floodgates to future evolution'', such as segmentation and body plans (Dawkins, 1989).
Accepted fully refereed and revised submissions reporting new work in these exciting areas are published in this volume. The papers are organized in four themes: Evolution of Evolvability, Evolvability without Genetics, Factors in Evolvability, and Measuring Evolvability.
Topics focusing on evolvability relate to such aspects as: Flexibility and Features of the Genotype-Phenotype Mapping / Relation; Constructive Dynamical Systems; Modularity & Compartmentation; Heritable Phenotypic Variability; Variability (the Capacity to Vary - as opposed to Variation); Self-Replicating & Self-Maintaining Systems; Developmental Constraints, Canalization; Evolution of Individuality; Differentiated Multicellularity, Segmentation, Body Plans,; Transitions in Units of Fitness; Symbiogenesis; Epigenetic Inheritance; Modularity in Development; Selection for Reluctance / Eagerness to Evolve; Search Behavior in Biological Systems; Genetic Control of Phenotypic Variablility; Signal Transduction & Robustness in Evolvability; Phenotypic Accomodation of Environmental Variation; Mathematical Models; Evolution of Complexity; Systems of Replication and Inheritance; Co-evolution of Control, Anatomy, and Ontogeny; Evolvability in Genetic & Non-Genetic Systems of Inheritance (e.g. ``Lamarckian'' (non-Weissmannian) and Cultural/Memetic Systems); Overcoming Brittleness in Evolutionary Computation; Open-Ended Evolution; Applications in Telecommunications, Software Maintenance & Software Engineering; the Biology of Evolvability; and Selecting for Evolvability
We are grateful to the evolvability workshop invited keynote speakers Lee Altenberg (University of Hawaii, Manoa) and Günter P. Wagner (Yale University). We thank the Artificial Life 7 conference chair Mark Bedau, and the special workshops and tutorials co-chairs Eilis Boudreau and Carlo Maley and other conference organizers for local and logistical support.
Evolvability Workshop Co-organizers & Scientific Committee:
Mark Bedau (Reed College, USA)
Chrystopher L. Nehaniv (University of Hertfordshire, UK) - chair
Thomas S. Ray (University of Okhlahoma, USA)
Paul Marrow (British Telecom, UK)
The on-line version of these proceedings is available at:
http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/nehaniv/al7ev/
Chrystopher L. Nehaniv, editor
University of Hertfordshire
Hatfield, England, U.K.