Evolution from a Thermodynamic Perspective: Implications for Species Conservation and Agricultural Sustainability

"Survival of the fittest" is a tautology. To survive, a species must reproduce. To reproduce, a species must survive. The complexity of life that we see today could not have developed based on selection that favors only reproductive ability. There is nothing inherent in reproductive success alone that could result in higher forms of life. Evolution from a Thermodynamic Perspective, divided into two parts, offers a non-circular definition of fitness and evolution. Fitness means maximization of power output, necessary to survive in a competitive world. Evolution means "storage of entropy". Despite entropy, there is an increase in the intricate structure and function of both species and ecosystems as they evolve simultaneously and reciprocally. It is autocatalysis in the feedback between species and ecosystems that enables the increase in power output necessary for evolution of higher forms of life. Part One explains why in language comprehensible to a scientific audience beyond biophysicists and ecosystem modelers.

While natural systems are stabilized by feedback, economic systems remain in a mode of perpetual growth, pressured externally by balance of trade and internally by a swelling population. The constraints imposed by thermodynamic laws are being increasingly felt as economic expansion destabilizes resource systems on which expansion depends. Part Two applies thermodynamic theory in non-esoteric language to sustainability of agriculture, and to conservation of endangered species.