CULTURE AND CANCER Rodrick Wallace The New York State Psychiatric Institute Deborah Wallace Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University Robert G. Wallace City University of New York * August 13, 2002 Abstract Genetic mechanisms, since they broadly involve information trans- mission, should be translatable into information dynamics formalism. From this perspective we reconsider the adaptive mutator, one pos- sible means of ‘second order selection’ by which a highly structured ‘language’ of environment and development writes itself onto the vari- ation upon which evolutionary selection and tumorigenesis operate. Our approach uses recent results in the spirit of the Large Deviations Program of applied probability that permit transfer of phase transition approaches from statistical mechanics to information theory, generat- ing evolutionary and developmental punctuation in what we claim to be a highly natural manner. Allowing ‘universality class tuning’ of the phase transition-analog generates a mutator by altering the rate at which an internal genetic picture of adaptive pressures comes to match them. The analysis has particular implications for understanding cancer etiology, as the col- lection of cellular and other mechanisms which limits tumorigenesis * Address correspondence to: Rodrick Wallace, PISCS Inc., 549 W. 123 St., Suite 16F, New York, NY, 10027. Telephone (212) 865-4766, email rdwall@ix.netcom.com. Affilia- tions are for identification only. This material has been submitted for publication and is protected by copyright. 1