Missing law: 'survival of the fittest' may apply to nonliving entities, new report suggests

Scientists have identified a "missing law" of evolution, which may explain how complex non-living systems such as stars can evolve, a new study reports. 

The law, called the "law of increasing functional information" predicts all evolving phenomena prioritises important functions such as stability, to develop systems with increasing order and complexity. This may explain why non-living cosmic phenomena evolve overtime, such as stars that are more chemically enriched than their predecessors, or atoms, hurricanes and minerals. 

The researchers published a PNAS research article claiming evolution and natural selection also apply to complex phenomena, much like how Darwin’s theory of evolution describes that natural selection produces the “survival of the fittest” - where traits are “selected” and passed down to living elements adapt to changing environments.

“We see Darwinian evolution as a specific case of a more general process that applies to nonliving systems as well,” said Dr Michael Wong, the first author of the research, based at the Carnegie Institution for Science, according to The Guardian. 

The paper identified “universal concepts of selection”, which “drive systems to evolve through the exchange of information between the environment and the system" meaning these systems adapt to evolve like living elements by "selecting" traits. 

Dr Wong said that understanding these complex systems through this law could help study environmental change and its impact on Earth.

He said: “After all, Earth’s biosphere is the most complex evolving system we know of so far. We ought to ask ourselves: what functions are we promoting (or damaging) in our own evolving biosphere? What features of our present-day society are conducive to not only long-term persistence but long-term thriving, and what aspects require changing?”

However, the new report has met mixed reviews from the Scientific world. Medical doctor and theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman called the report a "superb, bold, broad, and transformational article,” in a statement on the publication but astronomy Professor Martin Rees believes their law does not fit into the world of the nonliving systems, according to The Guardian.

He said: “I don’t see that this need be a manifestation of any new underlying principle analogous to the role of Darwinian selection via inheritance in the biological world.”