Evolution as a language that speaks itself

The 'self-referential' character of evolutionary process noted by Goldenfeld and Woese (2010) can be restated through a 'language' model in which genes, gene expression, and environment are represented as interacting information sources. The larger, composite, source that characterizes the high probability evolutionary paths then becomes, in a real sense, a language that speaks itself. The approach represents a significant extension of nonequilibrium condensed matter formalism in which the asymptotic limit theorems of information theory beat back the mathematical thicket a full step, providing necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for punctuated evolutionary transitions that can themselves be expressed as highly structured large deviations having their own grammar and syntax