  The theory of natural selection cannot describe how early life evolved, in
part because acquired characteristics are passed on through horizontal
exchange. It has been proposed that culture, like life, began with the
emergence of autopoietic form, thus its evolution too cannot be described by
natural selection. The evolution of autopoietic form can be described using a
framework referred to as Context-driven Actualization of Potential (CAP), which
grew out of a generalization of the formalisms of quantum mechanics, and
encompasses nondeterministic as well as deterministic change of state. The
autopoietic structure that evolves through culture is the mind, or more
accurately the conceptual network that yields an individual's internal model of
the world. A branch of CAP research referred to as the state-context-property
(SCOP) formalism provides a mathematical framework for reconciling the
stability of conceptual structure with its susceptibility to context-driven
change. The combination of two or more concepts (an extreme case of contextual
influence), as occurs in insight, is modeled as a state of entanglement.
Theoretical and empirical findings are presented that challenge assumptions
underlying virtually all of cognitive science, such as the notion of spreading
activation and the assumption that cognitive processes can be described with a
Kolmogorovian probability model.
