Quantum Darwinism - Darwinian Significance

Darwinian Significance

Perhaps of equal significance to the light this theory shines on quantum explanations is its identification of a Darwinian process operating as the selective mechanism establishing our classical reality. As numerous researchers have made clear any system employing a Darwinian process will evolve. As argued by the thesis of Universal Darwinism, Darwinian processes are not confined to biology but are any following the simple Darwinian algorithm:

1. Reproduction/Heredity; the ability to make copies and thereby produce descendants.
2. Selection; A process that preferentially selects one trait over another trait, leading to one trait being more numerous after sufficient generations.
3. Variation; differences in heritable traits that affect "Fitness” or the ability to survive and reproduce leading to differential survival.

Quantum Darwinism appears to conform to this algorithm and thus is aptly named:

1. Numerous copies are made of pointer states
2. Pointer states evolve in a continuous, predictable manner, that is descendants inherit many of their traits from ancestor states.
3. Successive interactions between pointer states and their environment reveal them to evolve and those states to survive which conform to the predictions of classical physics within the macroscopic world.

From this view quantum Darwinism provides a Darwinian explanation at the basis of our reality, explaining the unfolding or evolution of our classical macroscopic world. It is perhaps surprising that this same mechanism operating at the emergence of classical reality from quantum reality is also seen by scientific theories to be operating at the emergence of biology from chemistry and at the emergence of culture from biology.