Evo biologist here. These ideas are not really new to the field of evolution, but they are well laid out (if a little dense) & somewhat codified here.
The paper is an interesting read. Dunno if i agree with all of it yet, but it’s good to see the case made for thinking about evolution as a process that spans systems come up again.
When folks conflate a scientific law with a scientific theory. Theories are scientific explanations about why things happen. Laws are descriptions, that don’t provide explanation.
That’s not a distinction generally used by scientists.
Newton’s laws of motion and Einstein’s theory of special relativity are both sets of equations that describe motion, but they do not explain why gravity obeys an inverse square law, why c is invariant, etc.
In contrast, Gause’s law of competitive exclusion and Darwin’s theory of natural selection both explain population distributions in nature.
You see, there are these jars. Inside these jars are these brains. And the jars are floating in space.
I bet this has something to do with what they recently found out regarding evolution within the lake malawi fish. I heard about that about 2 weeks ago, this lines up too well.
Is it just:
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A species with certain traits is more likely to persist in a their environment.
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Some elements / forces with certain traits are more likely to persist in their environment. (Eg more stable atom configurations etc)
I thought everyone was already on board with that.
The most stable configuration would be the heat death of the universe, which will then be around the longest eventually.
