Adding genes and interaction to Smolin’s cosmological natural selection

Both natural selection and cosmological natural selection (CNS) can be defended via a common principle: in a sufficiently diverse physical ensemble, complex structures (or organisms) that self-reproduce abundantly will be well represented among similarly large and complex structures that reproduce poorly or not at all. The only difference is that CNS organisms are so large that their reproduction cycle cannot be fully observed. In this paper, the concepts gene, genome, organism, protein, and genomic innovation are generalized beyond DNA-based biology. It is then speculated that spacetime itself may be a continuous 3 + 1-dimensional gene that attaches to other genes via open strings and that reproduces via black-hole propagules that are scattered in an exotic hyperbrane. Although speculative, the resulting organisms improve Smolin’s equally speculative universes in several respects: they have generalized genes, are less ontologically extravagant, are causally interactive, do not depend on singularities and big crunches, and do not produce exactly one child for every black hole. It is concluded that, although Smolin’s concrete proposal may not be viable, there is a chance that CNS is right.