The existence of biological laws is something that has been up in the air for quite a long tme.

Artcles like John Beatys Evolutonary Contngency Thesis points in the directons of no uniquely
biological laws while Brandon and McSheas new publicaton Biologys First Law strongly suggests that
there are (or at least one). While these authors have diferent points of view, they each have one
commonality: Relatng biological laws to those of physics. Anyone who believes there are laws of nature
would not doubt that physics has the best examples of what should count, so it seems entrely
appropriate to use this science as the measuring stck. Moreover, physical laws that ft into this natural
law model usually have both a mathematcal and conceptual descripton of it feshed out, making
comparisons much easier to make across sciences with this universal language of math at hand. This is
what most philosophers have used as a gateway for biology into lawhood. If there is a super tght
analogy between some biological rule and, say, Newtons F = ma, then it would seem highly likely for
that rule to be a serious natural law contender. There just always seems to be some disanalogy between
the biological side of the analogy and the physical side, namely tme-reversibility and contngency. I
would like to propose that there are no biological laws that hold this partcular characteristc and,
because of this, advise step away from using this analogy to cross biology over into the set of natural
laws. Instead, I would like to put forth some other analogies that could be more useful.
Before getng in to anything, Id like to take the tme to put forth exactly the understanding of
tme-reversibility, tme-invariance, and the Newtonian analogy to biology that will be taken up. For the
tme-reversibility, this is a property of a phenomenon where if it is said to be tme-reversible, then it
would be impossible to tell beginning from end (i.e. looks the same in both directons of tme). To
imagine this, there is the classic example of throwing a ball through the air. If you were to close your
eyes and open them while the ball is in fight, there is no way to tell whether the ball is travelling
forwards or backwards in tme. The trajectory, forces, speeds, everything stays the same for that
Newtonian object. So, when a phenomenon obeys this, it is said to be tme-invariant. The Newtonian-
biology analogy is meant to portray the theory of evoluton (for all biological organisms) as a theory of
forces. Evolutonary forces such as mutaton, selecton, migraton, and other similar ideas are what is
believed to create change in evolutonary systems, and the more or stronger one of these forces are, the
more change. I believe that, even with a tght analogy, there would stll be a possibility for the biological
rule to be an accidental generalizaton without this specifc disanalogy closed. Laws in biology being
contngent on just how an organism evolved is a second and much more popular disanalogy. What I will
defend here is the thesis that if there is to be a wholly accepted biological law, it must portray
characteristc beyond just analogous superfcial behavior. The contngency problem must either be
solved or looked at in such a way that it becomes much less of a problem, if any problem at all. This trait
of tme-reversibility is the most sure-fre way to get around the contngency problem, but it is not the
only way. I shall propose and defend this way plus some others below.
So, why tme-reversibility? What makes this the factor to pick for certainty? These are clearly fair
questons to ask about the criterion posited, and hopefully I can provide some answers. This may be an
argument from intuiton, but it seems highly unlikely that any accidental generalizaton would be able to
support this characteristc. If a law is tme-invariant, then no mater how many tmes you were to
rewind and then replay a series of events, it would be exactly the same each and every tme. Zero
contngency. Keep in mind that I am not suggestng that it is a necessity to be tme-reversible to be a law,
but rather in order to use this type of Newtonian analogy it seems necessary. Of course there are tme-
asymmetric laws like that of thermodynamics, but those are beside the point. Then if you are able to
quantfy the change done to a system by forces, then reversing those forces should get you exactly back
to where you were to start. If again reapplying those forces in the original does not yield the same
outcome as before, then a force analogy becomes weakened. If biology is found to be tme-invariant,
then not only will the Newtonian equaton be reinvigorated, but a very strong case could then be made
for biological laws.
I think it would be best to undergo an analysis of this by taking some of the more prominent
laws in biology and evoluton and look at them in this tme-invariant sense. For a litle more thorough
analysis, two senses of reversing tme will be use: The one most physicist think of where the fow of tme
is simply reversed. The second will be where tme-invariance will be taken up in the sense akin to
Stephen Gould, the tape will be played backwards, but everything will be erased as well, leaving a fresh
start. Whether t not the system returns to the state it was at before the rewind will be the tell of
whether or not it is tme-invariant.
What most likely is the most prominent of the laws of biology is selecton. Using a Newtonian
analogy, selecton would be a force creatng change. So, for example, if an organism lived in an area that,
to start, had a fairly large brush habitat, but a fash brush fre came through and wiped it all out
permanently. Efectvely, it transformed the habitat into one with scarce food on the ground, but
abundant vegetaton in the tree tops. Selecton would push the organism to evolve in a way to access
that food and survive. In this scenario, as tme goes on, and if only selecton were to be actng on the
organism, then one should see a gradual increase in ftness of the organism (ftness defned in a way
meaning having a higher probability to survive and procreate, therefore passing on its traits). Since the
organisms that become more ft are more likely to pass on the genes, then one should see a gradual
take-over of the trait expressed by their genes making it the case that they are more ft than others.
Now, when tme is reversed on this fundamental idea of biology a clear breakdown in the normal
mechanics of evoluton happens. In the scenario given above, it would seem like the populatons ftness
would decrease passed. Once the spontaneous event happened (in this case the fre), the organisms
ftness would spike up, then, once again as tme went on, start decreasing again. This is the outcome
from fowing the Newtonian analogy. When tme reversed, so too would the force, pushing he organism
away from evolving into the more ft. This can be taken a step further, though. Let us assume that
selecton does in fact push the organism to become more ft, no mater the directon in tme. Now, run
the same scenario with the fre, watch the organisms become more ft, reverse tme, and now assume
the keep becoming more ft. The organisms adapt more to living and surviving in the trees as they once
again approach this sudden event of the fre, only this tme, since tme is reversed, it would be a
spontaneous shrub outburst. At frst glance this may seem like tme-invariance, but the key diference
here is that where the organism is on an evolutonary map is not where it was at the beginning of the
frst run-through. There would be no reason for selecton to push the organisms back to living on the
ground, assuming selecton had enough tme to make it sufciently ft in the trees. You can easily see
where this proposed law in biology law fails to be tme-invariant. It fails to be truly invariant in both
senses proposed, thus failing the Newtonian analogy and entry into natural lawhood by way of this
analogy.
The new and provocatve Zero-force evolutonary Law proposed by McShea and Brandon is a
quite peculiar case in regards to tme-reversibility.
I would like to take up Mendels law of gamete segregaton. The law states With respect to
each pair of genes of a sexual organism, 50% of the organisms gamete will carry one representatve of
that pair, and 50% will carry the other representatve pair. This statement has a lot going for it, it make a
defnitve claim, this 50-50 point is like an equilibrium that just seem right, but that is not enough to let
it go by this scrutny. When tme is reversed in a case of Mendelian segregaton, it becomes very odd to
think about. In a common case of this rule at work, a progenys genes are passed down to them by their
parents. So, in sexual reproducton of human, for example, 23 random chromosomes for the mother and
23 random chromosomes from the father are passed down for a combined 46 total chromosome.
Reverse tme, and it becomes fuzzy about what would happen. Do progeny now give their parents genes
and trait, even though whether going forward or backwards in tme, the parent would already be in
existence? It may be too early to say this is wholly tme-irreversible as someone later on could imagine a
way to think about it, but I will say that it is much easier, and probably more fruitul, to think about this
law in the second sense to be taken up. The way Stephen Gould looked at biology.
There are a few standout problems when this is done. To start of, there is the popular problem
that this split is just a product of evoluton. Thus, if you were to reverse tme to back before this was the
status-quo, then replay it, the 50-50 split could instead be pushed to, say, 70-30 by evolutonary
pressures (Gould). This is where a lot of arguments come in and say this is the way it happened though,
so let us count it as a law and contnue. There very well could be some ground to gain here. Maybe it is
unfair to wind back all the way to the beginning of biology. Afer all, the laws of physics were likely
radically diferent at the beginning of the known Universe, so they, too, could break down in a similar
manner. Going back to my deck of cards example, imagine I just that frst shufe were truly random and
the rest stll mixed-up the cards, but in a systematc way.
When selecton is taken up in the second way of tme-invariance, the story is a litle diferent.
Assume the same brush fre example as before. Now, reverse tme again, but erase everything up untl
the point tme is reversed again. Assume erasing everything you backed through includes erasing the
efects evolutonary forces that would have acted on the organism during the reversal.

The fact that this peculiar characteristc of Newtonian mechanics may seem like a small, but I
believe it is enough to warrant an abandonment of using the Newtonian analogy.
The second propositon is very much like Stephen Goulds videotape, but with a slight twist. As
we have seen, it is very unlikely that any biological law would hold in a reversed tme scenario. This
makes it so the tme-invariance in Newtonian mechanics cannot be displayed in the biological world. A
consequence of this is that you really cannot rewind lifes tape and then replay it. Doing so would not
make you arrive at the same inital conditon you had in the frst run through. What would need to be
done is more of a copying acton. Imagine instead of rewinding just looping.
Is it a fair critcism of biology not being able to have laws because of contngency?

To picture this, think of someone shufing a brand-new deck of cards in a purely random way. As tme
goes on and there are more shufes, the deck becomes more and more random. Now apply tme-
reversibility to it and when one reverses tme, they see the deck get less and less random: A clear
directon in tme. Also, one could imagine now playing tme forward again once the deck is back to its
original state, the deck would not go back to the same shufed order afer the same amount of shufes
(due to the pure randomness). Therefore, statng that the cards will end up in this way afer x amount
of shufes is an accidental generalizaton. This contngency problem would not exist in a law that is tme-
reversible (at least in a relevant scope, which I will discuss later), and with contngency seeming to be a
biological laws worst enemy, being able to have tme-reversibility would be the most sure-shot way of
getng around this problem.