The Three Constraints Upon Biological Populations

The constraint of constant size

0 =  T0dM < M’ = N’m̅’

The individual entities in every biological population are genotypes which together encode that population’s genome or collective genetic encoding, which at least some amongst them are able to reproduce and recreate.

Statement | Discussion

The constraint of constant propagation

0 =  T0dP < P’ = N’p̅’

Every biological population is associated with a collection of traits, behaviours, and cultural artefacts and information that change constantly, but that can always be divided into discrete elements all of which have the potential to be mimicked and transferred from one individual entity within the population to another.

Statement | Discussion

The constraint of constant equivalence

0 =  T0dS < S’ = N’s̅’

[A] No individual biological entity can be separated from all possible discrete elements of traits, behaviours, and cultural artefacts and information.

(Corollary: prodigious savant are always possible; and even “the walls of rude minds are scrawled all over with facts, with thoughts” Ralph Waldo Emerson).

[B] Not all the discrete elements associated with any one trait, behaviour, or cultural artefact or information can be uniquely attributed to any one biological entity.

(Corollary: “Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than them, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size” John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, 1159).

Statement | Discussion