Diversity and Complexity are Easy

The very first sentence of Biology’s first law makes clear that the authors intend to supply for biology nothing less than what Newton supplied for physics, namely, a fundamental law at the base of all biological explanations. The ‘zero-force evolutionary law’ (ZFEL) that the authors champion is said to be analogous to Newton’s first law, the law of inertia, although they quickly go on to deny that they wish to compare themselves with Newton (ix). A short time later, however, they declare that ‘This book tries to effect a fundamental gestalt shift in how we view evolutionary phenomena’ built, not on surprising, new empirical discoveries, but on a variety of things already well known (xi)—just like Newton, one might observe. The comparison with Newton’s achievement and the (Kuhnian) language of a ‘gestalt shift’ suggests that the authors harbour a grand ambition in this slender volume. Remarkably, they make a decent case that the ZFEL, if not quite on the same level as Newton’s first law, should at least be taken as seriously as a fundamental principle in evolutionary theorizing. The case for ZEFL is made in seven chapters.