Entropy and Selection: Life as an Adaptation for Universe Replication

Figure 1

The selective and entropic processes as the primary causes of order and disorder. The linked concepts in the figure’s upper half (order and disorder) represent the entropic process of ever-increasing disorder. The linked concepts in the lower half (replication and selection) represent processes of biological or cosmological natural selection: genetic or universe designs which outreplicate others achieve, via selection, greater representation in a population or multiverse. Selection leads to order because it produces the most orderly (and thus least entropic) known objects in the universe—adaptations—the function of which is to enable replication against the tide of the entropic process. Because adaptations must realize the complex goal of replication, they are characterized by improbable complex order, and such order is the hallmark of selection. The more improbably and complexly ordered something is (i.e., the lower its entropy), the more likely it is to be a biological or cosmological adaptation; intelligent life would thus be more likely than black holes (or anything else) to be a cosmological adaptation. Selection may be the main or only ultimate antientropic process in the universe/multiverse; that is, much or all order we observe may be the product or by-product of selection for replication at the biological and cosmological levels.