One Funeral At A Time: Mitochondrial Consensus and Nuclear Innovation: A DNA-Based Ontology of Informational Evolution in Science.

One Funeral At A Time: Mitochondrial Consensus and Nuclear Innovation: A DNA-Based Ontology of Informational Evolution in Science. Author: Nelson John Adams @JohnNAdams2 (X -Twitter) nelson.j.adams@gmail.com Abstract This conceptual paper proposes a precise biological relabeling of the dynamics of scientific and technological progress. The prevailing academic consensus is mapped onto human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) — tiny, clonally transmitted, non-recombinogenic, and subject to intense purifying selection that enforces extraordinary functional conservation despite high mutational input. In contrast, disruptive theoretical and engineering innovations are mapped onto nuclear DNA — vast, biparentally inherited, recombinogenic, and the primary engine of adaptive novelty and branching diversification. The superior explanatory precision of this mtDNA/nuclear distinction over generic variation-selection-retention models of scientific change is argued to constitute the theory’s own self-referential validation: a successful recombinogenic synthesis that produces a more viable conceptual offshoot. The paper defends the stronger ontological claim that biological evolution, cultural evolution, and informational evolution are identical in kind — a single universal process of replicating information differing only in substrate and timescale. Case studies — plate tectonics, the resurgence of deep learning, SpaceX’s reusable launch vehicles, and the paper itself as a meta-example — illustrate the framework’s mapping power. Drawing on George Bernard Shaw’s celebration of the “unreasonable man” and Max Planck’s observation that science advances “one funeral at a time,” the work reveals why consensus resists radical change (to preserve core function) and how progress ultimately depends on persistent, recombinogenic challengers. Ultimately, reality is one evolving informational field: all is data; all is one.Keywords (suggested for Zenodo, comma-separated):