Maximisation Principles and Daisyworld

Abstract

We investigate whether the equilibrium time averaged state of a self-organising system with many internal degrees of freedom, 2D- daisyworld, can be described by optimising a single quantity. Unlike physical systems where a principle of maximum energy production has been observed, Daisyworld follows evolutionary dynamics rather than Hamiltonian dynamics. We find that this is sufficient to invalidate the MEP principle, finding instead a different principle, that the system self-organises to a state which maximises the amount of life.