The majority of definitions of life and evolution include the notion that part of an organism has to be copied to its offspring and that this includes some form of coded information. This article presents the thesis that this conception is too restrictive and that evolution can occur in systems in which there is no copy of information between generations. For that purpose, this article introduces a new set of concepts and a theoretical framework that is designed to be equally applicable to the study of the evolution of biological and nonbiological systems. In contrast to some theoretical approaches in evolution, like neo-Darwinism, the approach presented here is not focused on the transmission and change of hereditary information that can be copied (like in the case of DNA). Instead, multiple mechanisms by which a system can generate offspring (with and without copying) and by which information in it affects the structure and evolution of its offspring are considered. The first part of this article describes in detail these new concepts. The second part of this article discusses how these concepts are directly applicable to the diversity of systems that can evolve. The third part introduces hypotheses concerning (1) how different mechanisms of generation and inheritance can arise from each other during evolution, and (2) how the existence of several inheritance mechanisms in an organism can affect its evolution.

中文翻译：

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生物和非生物系统在不同生成和遗传机制下的进化。

关于生命和进化的大多数定义都包括以下概念：有机体的一部分必须复制到其后代中，并且其中包括某种形式的编码信息。本文提出的论点是，这一概念过于严格，并且进化可能会在世代之间没有信息副本的系统中发生。为此，本文介绍了一套新概念和一个理论框架，旨在同样适用于研究生物和非生物系统的进化。与进化论中的某些理论方法（例如新达尔文主义）相反，此处提出的方法并不关注可以复制的遗传信息的传递和变化（例如DNA）。代替，考虑了多种机制，系统可以通过这些机制生成后代（有或没有复制），并且系统中的信息会影响其后代的结构和进化。本文的第一部分详细介绍了这些新概念。本文的第二部分讨论了这些概念如何直接适用于可以发展的系统的多样性。第三部分介绍了有关以下方面的假设：（1）在进化过程中彼此之间如何产生不同的生成和遗传机制；（2）生物体中几种遗传机制的存在如何影响其进化。本文的第二部分讨论了这些概念如何直接适用于可以发展的系统的多样性。第三部分介绍了有关以下方面的假设：（1）在进化过程中彼此之间如何产生不同的生成和遗传机制；（2）生物体中几种遗传机制的存在如何影响其进化。本文的第二部分讨论了这些概念如何直接适用于可以发展的系统的多样性。第三部分介绍了有关以下方面的假设：（1）在进化过程中彼此之间如何产生不同的生成和遗传机制；（2）生物体中几种遗传机制的存在如何影响其进化。