Nb: Work in Progress Still Changing

Modified 24 Jan 2015; 31 Jan 2015; 19 Feb 2015 This is part of the Turing-inspired Meta-Morphogenesis project, which aims to identify transitions in information-processing since the earliest proto-organisms, in order to provide new understanding of varieties of biological intelligence. Transitions depend on "construction-kits", including the initial "Fundamental Construction Kit" (FCK) based on physics and "Derived Construction Kits" (DCKs) produced by evolution, development, learning, and culture. Some construction kits (e.g. Lego, Meccano, plasticine, sand) are concrete: using physical components and relationships. Others (e.g. grammars, proof systems and programming languages) are abstract: producing abstract entities, e.g. sentences, proofs, and new abstract construction kits. Some are meta-construction kits: able to create, modify or combine construction kits. Construction kits are generative: they explain sets of possible construction processes, with mathematical properties and limitations. Evolution and development demonstrate new possibilities for construction kits: evolution as a "blind theorem prover", proving "theorems" about what is and is not possible for the kits used, including meta-cognitive abilities to think and reason about mathematical discoveries, and discuss them with others, leading, for example, to Euclid’s Elements. FCKs and DCKs help to provide new answers to old philosophical questions, e.g. about the nature of mathematics, language, mind, science, and life, and expose deep connections between science and metaphysics. The requirement to show how the FCK makes everything else possible provides a challenge for physicists: demonstrate that your fundamental theory can explain how all the products of natural selection are possible. A core thread is the connection of control and (semantic) information. The aim is to explain, not reduce: even qualia are products of products of evolution -and will occur in robots with animal intelligence. This paper merely introduces a large research programme that seems to have a chance of being progressive, in the sense of Lakatos.}%abstract