Thomas F. Kochmann Ordre des livres

For decades, a controversial discussion has revolved around the unit of Darwinian selection, with various evolutionary biologists offering differing perspectives. Some, like Richard Dawkins, focus solely on the "egoistic gene," while others, such as David Sloan Wilson and Elliot Sober, emphasize individual organisms or groups. Additionally, figures like Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge have explored species or clade selection, leading to hierarchical principles like multi-level selection. Previous mathematical attempts to address this question primarily utilized tools from the field of Analysis, employing stochastic or deterministic ordinary or partial differential equations. In contrast, the author introduces a novel approach by incorporating the field of Logic, constructing a formal evolutionary framework. This involves new concepts such as "necessity" and "adaptive reaction," which may require practice for the reader to grasp fully. To facilitate understanding, numerous (molecular) biological examples are provided. Ultimately, this work enables readers to shift from a bottom-up "imperative" view of evolution to a more abstract top-down "declarative" perspective, framing evolution as a generalized satisfiability problem of an arbitrary logical formula. This reprint of the original work from 2001 is dedicated to Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002).