A formal approach to evolution as self-referential language

The recursive, self-referential, character of evolutionary process can be restated through a ‘language’ model in which genes, gene expression, and environment are represented as interacting information sources. The approach uses the asymptotic limit theorems of information theory to provide powerful necessary conditions for punctuated evolutionary transitions that can themselves be expressed as highly structured large deviations having their own grammar and syntax. The methodology defines, in a sense, the riverbanks that constrain, but do not determine, the self-dynamic stream of evolutionary process.