Laws of Natural Selection; laws that can sustain civilization

During the eons that life has thrived on Earth, individuals and species have come and gone while the total system of living beings has flourished to populate and repopulate the nooks and crannies of Earth’s biosphere in spite of limited resources, climate changes and random catastrophes. The principles underlying this dynamic and robust process are probably emergent ones that survived competitive alternatives rather than intrinsic laws built into the system of life. In any event, these principles underlie the only laboratory example we have of a sustainable system involving living beings. I have chosen to refer to them as the Laws of Natural Selection, building on Darwin.  I have also called them the Laws of Evolutionary Engineering; probably because I’m an engineer by profession and found myself comparing them to the laws of engineering which have structured and run the Industrial Revolution and modern economies.

Primary objective of natural selection

Generate and sustain life on Earth within the constraints of limited resources and limited usable energy while enduring the uncertainties and random catastrophes intrinsic to local and global environments.

Laws of Natural Selection

• 1. Embrace Uncertainty
• 2. Emphasize adaptability
     a. Game every system
     b. Evolve a full range of system-system tactics from relentless competition to symbiosis
     c. Decouple (but do not isolate) living things using space, time, phase, frequency, scale, complexity, physical boundaries, energy barriers and random noise.
     d. Decentralize by promoting local communities rather than global ones
     e. Diversify processes and outcomes
     f. Build fully differential living systems.
• 3. Recycle everything, locally and often
• 4. Rampantly overproduce and relentlessly prune
• 5. Establish and defend well regulated, flexible borders
• 6. Establish and redundantly enforce term limits (borders in time)
• 7. Interconnect living things with massively redundant, reversible, weak connections.
• 8. Limit the palette of raw materials employed by living things
• 9. Energy Laws
     a. Exploit sustainable energy sources: solar, geothermal, gravitational and Earth’s rotational energies
     b. Use outer space as energy sink
     c. Stabilize global climate in a range supportive of life
     d. Intrinsically produce readily usable reserves of energy and materials
     e. Harvest energy of construction
     f. Minimize non-harvestable energy used to transport

Those who take a homocentric view of life might argue that the design objective of evolution and its trade-offs was to prepare a habitat for mankind. That view, advocated by many religious beliefs, is re-assuring and ego-satisfying, but it is not scientifically justifiable. There is abundant geologic evidence that the creation of or survival of specific individuals or specific species has not been life’s objective. All evolutionary evidence and our own short sighted behaviors suggest that the human species will be but temporary residents of Earth and that life will long endure after humanity has parted the scene. Whether our time is nearly over, or whether it continues for thousands or even millions of additional years, is a matter of how well we continually adapt as we and natural systems jointly modify our global home. Life has indeed given Homo sapiens the opportunity to exist, to flourish and to survive but it has not entitled us to do so. Earth is a world of opportunities for individuals and species; there is no evidence that it is a world of entitlements for the human race.

We can say with as much certainty as science can muster: life on Earth will go on and continue to flourish, whether or not the human species goes extinct. The Laws of Natural Selection insure this result, and this result alone.  We should proceed with more humility and need to embrace the uncertainty of our continued survival and the Laws of Natural Selection as resources, not as enemies to be feared or conquered. For example, our “war on terror” is merely a war on one element of uncertainty.

During the month of June I will go into more detail on each of the laws starting with “Embrace Uncertainty”.

Edwin Lee
May 27. 2009