Nothing Makes Sense in Computing Except in the Light of Evolution

Most work on computation deals with its structural aspects—what it is composed of, how the individual elements work in isolation and how they are connected to one another, how best they can be implemented by a physical systems, etc.—in sum, it concerns itself with a proximate account of computation’s mechanisms. We argue that, though that kind of work is of course indispensable, computation cannot be understood or even properly defined if it is not placed in the context of the evolutionary feedback loop that brought it into being and continually monitors its adaptive fitness with respect to its ultimate goals within the organism that employs it.