"The transformation of the redox state of the planetary system, from reducing when life first appeared some 3.8 billion years ago (GYA-i.e., giga years ago) to mildly oxidative some 2 GYA to its presently highly oxidative state, is a measure of a progressive ordering or internal entropy reduction of the planetary system as a whole. Given the balance equation dictated by the second law, this progressive increase of order is also a measure of an increasing rate of entropy production for the geocosmic field: Local reductions of entropy in a field (the local production and maintenance of order) necessarily increase its rate of entropy production (the rate at which it minimizes its potentials)."
"living things are not equilibrium states but rather steady states maintained away from equilibrium by a continuous flow of energy and matter. To be a living thing implies converting energy into organization and doing so ceaselessly, and thus the order defining a living thing continuously adds to the universal entropy;"
"Schrodinger's insight is mute with respect to the directed nature of life as an opportunistic planetary process of self-organization characterized by progressive differentiation and complexification"
"Life proliferates horizontally (increase in number) and vertically (increase in levels of order) because the rate of entropy production is thereby increased."
"Evolution became defined by Darwinism itself as the result of natural selection acting on a Malthusian population, namely, a population of differentially replicating or reproducing entities competing for limited resources"
"Such fissioning is commonplace. It is observed in the Benard experiment, in the multiplication of living cells, and in the increase in population through the proliferation of villages during the Paleolithic period from approximately 1,500 villages at the beginning to about 75,000 villages at the end (Carneiro, 1987b; Swenson, in press-c)"
"T'he physical account of evolution espoused here assumes that the Earth will evolve as a global entity so as to maximize the extension of its dissipative surfaces and to degrade, thereby, the geo-cosmic potential at the fastest possible rate given the constraints"
"If the local energy resource is removed from a nonliving autocatakinetic system -for example, turning off the heat in the B6nard experiment-then the system "dies." When the local energy resource is removed from a living thing, however-for example, when food in the vicinity of an organism is depleted-an increase in activity rather than a decrease or stoppage of activity is usually the reaction."
"Natural selection cannot address or even recognize this global evolution (in fact denies it; Dawkins, 1982) because there is no population of replicating and competing Earth systems on which natural selection can act"
"Natural selection presupposes, at the outset, the characteristic achievements of living things--self maintenance, adaptability, reproduction, and the abilities to perceive and act coordinately. Further, because it cannot address this functional global whole, Darwinian theory, despite the overwhelming evidence, adopts an agnostic and sometimes hostile posture toward the creative or progressive (meaning: going in a direction) nature of evolution (e.g., Maynard-Smith, 1969; Williams, 1966)"
"A selection principle is required that can account for the selection of ordered from disordered things and the progressive evolution of the global entity as a whole. Because competition for resources (where a generalized resource is a nonequilibrium field potential as defined later) is not between replicating entities but between macro (ordered) and micro (disordered) modes, the principle cannot, by definition, be biological."