Reply to Root-Bernstein: Increasing complexity allows for the pervasiveness of low-complexity entities and is not anthropocentric
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1.
Carnegie Institution for Science
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2.
Space Telescope Science Institute
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3.
California Institute of Technology
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4.
University of Colorado Boulder
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5.
Howard University
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6.
Blue Marble Space Institute of Science
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7.
Cornell University
Abstract
Root-Bernstein (1) argues that our usage of the terminology “selection for” (2) is not consistent with the picture of selection in evolutionary biology. We contend that this is a matter of semantics, for we agree that biological selection operates via diffuse, nonuniform survival/reproduction, and we do not invoke the requirement for “some agent” that drives nature toward a particular goal. Information is no more an agent of evolution than mass is an agent of gravity or entropy is an agent of the second law of thermodynamics; these are simply measurable parameters about the world that are useful for describing its regularities.
Copyright and License
© 2024 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. This article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY).
Contributions
M.L.W., J.I.L., and R.M.H. designed research; M.L.W., S.B., C.E.C., H.D., H.J.C., A.P., J.I.L., and R.M.H. performed research; and M.L.W., S.B., C.E.C., H.D., H.J.C., A.P., J.I.L., and R.M.H. wrote the paper.
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Additional details
- PMCID
- PMC11348080
- PMID
- 39133837
- Caltech groups
- Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS)
- Publication Status
- Published