- #1
WarrenPlatts
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Space is an ecosystem. Objects compete for matter. An asteroid slams into the Moon, and is pulverized. It loses its identity. But the Moon remains the Moon, but with a new pockmark--and it gains more matter to make it even more powerful. But sometimes, things eat too much, like supermassive stars. They are not very fit because they explode from indigestion after just a few million years. Obesity kills. Luckily for most of the matter in the universe, there is the law of inertia. This creates a level playing field that prevents the smaller items from getting directly sucked into the the larger players.
The competition for matter by planets, stars and galaxies is a form of natural selection in a nonliving domain. Which would seem to entail that celestial objects are adapted entities in the biological sense. Thus, the boundary between biological and the physical sciences is dissolved not by reducing biology to physics, but rather by supersizing physics to include the biological principles of natural selection and adaptation.
The competition for matter by planets, stars and galaxies is a form of natural selection in a nonliving domain. Which would seem to entail that celestial objects are adapted entities in the biological sense. Thus, the boundary between biological and the physical sciences is dissolved not by reducing biology to physics, but rather by supersizing physics to include the biological principles of natural selection and adaptation.