Conflict Resolution

Abstract

There is an inevitable conflict between organisms and their surroundings: the nature of the organism is to overexploit by means of inheritance systems that overproduce highly similar offspring, creating a struggle for survival. Living systems cope with this conflict by exploring new options in fitness space, even when this leads to reduced fitness. But simply coping with conflict is not enough to produce evolutionary diversification. That requires conflict resolution resulting in permanent changes signified by the emergence of two or more novel inheritance systems from a single ancestral system. Evolution is thus less about the cost of conflict (organisms pay no more than they can afford) and more about whether or not conflict is resolved. When conflict resolution occurs, it is a two-step process involving compensatory changes—density-dependent responses that break inheritance systems apart—followed by selection for novel forms of cohesion—functional integration that brings inheritance systems together. Compensatory changes decrease correlations in the inheritance system leading it to become more generalized (diffused) in fitness space. Cohesion increases correlations in the inheritance system leading it to become more specialized (concentrated) in fitness space. When a recently generalized inheritance system becomes isolated in a new part of fitness space due to a compensatory change, selection favoring cohesion can produce newly emergent inheritance systems. Yet, because the nature of the organism always predominates, conflict resolution always leads to new conflict. This ensures that evolution continues. Natural selection is a pervasive emergent property providing positive feedback for metabolic and inheritance phenomena, facilitating exploration when it is favored and exploitation when it is favored.