Can Darwinism help us understand Quantum Mechanics?

Abstract

Quantum Mechanics is arguably the most controversial theory ever constructed: its overwhelming empirical success contrasts with the perplexity about its basic meaning. Darwin’s evolutionary theory, on the other side, is hailed as the only conceptual framework that allows us to make sense of biological phenomena, at the same time its theoretical efficiency has been overly debated. Although both quantum physics and evolutionary theory constitute a scientific bedrock in contemporary thinking, a deeper analysis of their relationship is still missing. In the following paper I will address the connection between Darwinism and a specific interpretation of quantum mechanics proposed by Carlo Rovelli, namely, Relational Quantum Mechanics. I will aim to show that Darwinism (understood in a broad sense) has constituted a central source of inspiration for Rovelli’s own proposal, in three different ways: first, Darwinism provides a model of a philosophically satisfactory scientific theory; second, it introduces a way of thinking at odds with traditional substantialism; and third, it stresses the central and unifying role of information.