An Endosymbiotic Model for Modular Acquisition in Stochastic Developmental Systems

Hierarchical modular composition is often cited as a requisite for scalable complexity. The most popular reference in this regard is Herbert Simon’s allegory of the watchmakers Tempus and Hora. And yet, while numerous studies have used this story as a jumping-off point to explain the emergence of hierarchical modular composition in evolutionary systems, relatively few emphasize the role of noise in the parable. Developmental representations, which model “biological assembly”, are a suitable lens through which to explore this latter aspect, since noise and error during ontogeny can have a significant negative impact on the progress of evolution. In this work we present an endosymbiotic model for modular acquisition in a developmental representation, and demonstrate its ability to hierarchically assemble large objects in the presence of developmental noise.