Near decomposability and the speed of evolution

Herbert Simon

Industrial and Corporate Change, 2002, vol. 11, issue 3, 587-599

Abstract: This paper proposes an explanation for a fundamental property that appears to be shared by all multicelled organisms. Such organisms consist of a hierarchy of components, such that, at any level of the hierarchy, the rates of interaction within components at that level are much higher than the rates of interaction between different components. Systems with this property are called nearly completely decomposable, or more briefly, nearly decomposable (ND). The explanation for the ubiquity of the ND property is that, under the usual conditions of mutation and-or crossover and natural selection, ND systems will increase in fitness, and therefore reproduce, at a much faster rate than systems that do not possess the ND property. Copyright 2002, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (61)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:indcch:v:11:y:2002:i:3:p:587-599

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Industrial and Corporate Change is currently edited by Josef Chytry

More articles in Industrial and Corporate Change from Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().