Simple Selection

Abstract

The main purpose of evolutionary biology is to provide a rational explanation for the extraordinarily complex and intricate organization of living things. To explain means to identify a mechanism that causes evolution and to demonstrate the consequences of its operation. These consequences are then the general laws of evolution, of which any given system or organism is a particular outcome. The very complexity that stimulates investigation, however, long obscured the possibility of a mechanical interpretation, and the richness of the subject matter continues to encourage a piecemeal and anecdotal description of nature, and inhibits the development of a strong central research program in experimental evolution. Nevertheless, to explain complexity it is first necessary to study simplicity; although the products of evolution are exceedingly complicated, the processes of evolution can be seen most clearly and manipulated most easily when these complications are stripped away. One way of asking, what is the most fundamental principle of evolution? is instead to ask, what is the simplest system capable of evolving?