Evolution expresses the second law of thermodynamics in action.

Abstract

Evolution through natural selection has long been considered unique to biological systems, yet similar patterns emerge from physical, chemical, technological, economic and social processes. Skewed distributions, often near-lognormal, and sigmoidal courses, often with a power-law central region, recur across scales and scopes, making no distinction between living and non-living. This ubiquity suggests that evolution, in all its manifestations, expresses a universal principle. The second law of thermodynamics, derived from the statistical physics of open systems, explains the recurrent patterns: flows of energy naturally select the means and mechanisms that bring about balance in the least time. As a sequence of changes, evolution is destined for the free-energy minimum, equivalent to the entropy maximum; yet its paths remain profoundly unpredictable, even chaotic, as the process alters its own course by consuming its driving forces. By integrating all these interdependencies under the atomistic axiom, the equation of evolution becomes a holistic formulation. Unlike additive genetic models, thermodynamics naturally accounts for multiplicative dynamics and allometric scaling observed in proliferation, adaptation, speciation, cooperation, competition and self-organization, as well as in disintegration, degeneration and extinction. In this way, thermodynamics finally provides the long-sought unified theory from microscopic constituents to macroscopic phenomena.