Sylvain Charlat

Heredity and individuality: ingredients or products of evolution?

What are the conditions for the emergence of Darwinian processes? “Heredity and individuality” is the minimal answer that I will first try to develop and justify. But it still leaves us a long way short of our longer-term goal: to formulate the principle of evolution by natural selection in terms general enough to allow us to question its occurrence in other physical systems, that is, outside of the “life clade” alone. To get closer to this, it is relevant to realise that within biology itself, heredity and individuality can be seen as both conditions and consequences of evolution. These considerations will be illustrated by examples on levels of selection and genetic conflicts. I will also present the ‘physical soup’ models we are currently developing to clarify the extent to which rudimentary natural selection might operate in systems initially devoid of individuality and heredity.