Discover Community Create You

Loading publication...

Noodle always counts identifier-free feature events for service operation. With your permission, Google Analytics can also estimate audience and engagement. Search text, publication identifiers, cookies, IP addresses and browser fingerprints are never included in Noodle's first-party event counters.

Privacy details

Article

Contingency, convergence and hyper-astronomical numbers in biological evolution.

Studies in history and philosophy of biological and biomedical sciences - 1 Aug 2016

Louis Ard A

Abstract excerpt

Counterfactual questions such as "what would happen if you re-run the tape of life?" turn on the nature of the landscape of biological possibilities. Since the number of potential sequences that store genetic information grows exponentially with length, genetic possibility spaces can be so unimaginably vast that commentators frequently reach of hyper-astronomical metaphors that compare their size to that of the...

Read the complete abstract on PubMed

Topics

Share this publication in a Topic to start or enrich a Post.

Share to Biological Evolution
Share to Genotype
Share to Mathematics

Methodology Data sources Editorial policy Privacy Delete account & data About Contact Helena Bioinformatics

Share to Models, Genetic

Share to Phenotype

Share to Selection, Genetic

Source

Identifiers

PMID: 26868415
DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2015.12.014

Provenance

PubMed metadata and Literature Corpus relationships. Corpus snapshot updated 7 Sept 2026. Manifest publication-graph-cohort-2026-09-08.1.

Source receipt: pubmed, retrieved 7 Sept 2026.

Related research

Semantic proximity does not establish scientific evidence. Graph snapshot: 2026-09-29.

Research trail→

Click a neighbor to travelStep 1 · 12 closest

Contingency, convergence and hyper-astronomical numbers in biological evolution.PMID 26868415Read ↗

Experimental evolution of evolvability.Semantic proximity Read ↗

Genetic Correlations Greatly Increase Mutational Robustness and Can Both Reduce and Enhance Evolvability.Semantic proximity Read ↗

The geometry of evolutionary conflict.Semantic proximity Read ↗

Structural properties of genotype-phenotype maps.Semantic proximity Read ↗

From genotypes to organisms: State-of-the-art and perspectives of a cornerstone in evolutionary dynamics.Semantic proximity Read ↗

The search for universality in evolutionary landscapes: Comment on "From genotypes to organisms: State-of-the-art and perspectives of a cornerstone in evolutionary dynamics" by Susanna Manrubia, José A. Cuesta, et al.Semantic proximity Read ↗

Why Phenotype Robustness Promotes Phenotype Evolvability.Semantic proximity Read ↗

Experimental evolution of evolvabilitySemantic proximity Read ↗

Phenotypic cliffs in the RNA genotype-phenotype map.Semantic proximity Read ↗

A simple model of unbounded evolutionary versatility as a largest-scale trend in organismal evolution.Semantic proximity Read ↗

Plus ça ne change pas: evolution may be a race, but to where?Semantic proximity Read ↗

Expanding the modern synthesis.Semantic proximity Read ↗

⌁Select a neighboring publication to make it the new centre.