FEEDBACK THEORY AND DARWINIAN EVOLUTION

Feedback loops can have a significant impact on biological systems that are evolving under Darwinian natural selection. Many of the striking and sometimes bizarre patterns that characterize the evolution of such systems have simple, natural explanations that involve the effects of feedback loops. The two fundamental types of feedback loops, positive and negative, have effects that are radically different: negative feedback tends to produce stability and resistance to change; positive feedback produces instability and even catastrophe. Both types of feedback loops are important in biological systems, and both can produce chaos, whose mathematical complexity often produces strange, beautiful and totally unexpected patterns that have only begun to be explored using the computational capabilities of modern electronic computers. An understanding of the patterns that can result from the effects of feedback loops can produce important new insights into the patterns that mark the evolutionary development of biological systems. © 1991 Academic Press Limited.