It is commonly accepted by those who consider macroevolution as a process decoupled from microevolution that its apparent jerkiness (and, hence, incompatibility with principles of population genetics) results from the structural complexity of epigenetic systems, since all complex cybernetic systems are expected to behave discontinuously. To analyse the validity of this assumption, the process of self-improvement has been analysed in a complex cybernetic system by means of computer simulations. It turns out that the investigated system tends to develop by accumulation (...) of as small structural changes as possible, while larger changes are likely to result in the collapse of the system rather than in its persistence or improvement. This implies that cybernetic considerations alone cannot justify the claim that the very nature of epigenetic systems induces evolution by discrete steps rather than by gradual accumulation of small changes. (shrink)

The spontaneity of natural life is the only property which differs this type of life from artificial life. However, it may be the main basis to understand life. Artificial life is constructed by living beings; it is a part of the natural life process, and its properties are not an effect of its own restrictions but of external assumptions. Therefore the investigation of artificial life is not a safe way of searching for basic properties of natural life. The purposefulness appears (...) only in the area of a life process. We generalize the notion of information and encoding to apply them to the physical phenomena description. We use them to define the purposeful information—its example is a biological information, its quantity is an Eigen’s information value. Next we investigate properties of the spontaneous process of purposeful information collecting. In effect we get such properties of this process as: a goal “to exist”, reproduction and the Darwinian mechanism of randomchangeability and elimination. In this process a natural identity criterion of the evolving object connected with the “small change tendency” appears. (shrink)