Natural Selection
Evolution by Natural Selection
Natural selection can preserve and refine heritable biological features that contribute to survival or reproduction. Over many generations, this process can produce adaptations and can contribute to organized features of biological systems.
Self Organization
Self-Organization and Emergent Order
Some biological organization can arise through interactions among system components rather than through a separate mechanism specifying every detail of the resulting pattern. Such processes are commonly described as self-organization or emergent order.
Historical Constraints
Constraint, Inheritance, and Historical Development
Living systems do not develop from a blank starting point. Evolution modifies inherited structures and regulatory systems, so present biological organization can reflect both current function and the historical pathways by which earlier systems changed.
Convergent Organization
Engineering Principles as Convergent Solutions
Biological and engineered systems sometimes display similar organizational principles because both must solve problems involving control, stability, communication, efficiency, robustness, and response to changing conditions.
Design
Purposeful Design
Intelligent Design proposes that some features of living systems may be better explained by purposeful organization than by undirected processes alone. The proposal focuses especially upon functionally specified information and highly integrated systems whose components work together to accomplish biological functions.
