Clonal Selection from First Principles

Clonal selection is the keystone of mainstream immunology and computational systems based on immunological principles. For the latter, clonal selection is often interpreted as an asexual variant of natural selection, and thus, tend to be variations on evolutionary strategies. Retro-fitting immunological sophistication and theoretical rigour onto such systems has proved to be unwieldy. In this paper we assert the primacy of competitive exclusion over selection and mutation; providing theoretical analysis and empirical results that support our position. We show our algorithm to be highly competitive with well-established approximation and learning techniques; notably for large, high-dimensional problems. We further argue that it provides concise, operational abstractions of some influential theoretical immunology.