Biological evolution is an incredible force for change and advancement. It has taken individual cells and molded them into an enormous variety of life on this planet, including ourselves. We have then increased the pace by engaging in a cultural evolution, most strikingly with incredible technologies that are transforming the world yet again. I'd like to show that this process can be generalized to far more situations than you might expect. The main idea here is that the process is an intrinsic part of our universe, in fact, any universe that can be conceived. I'll start simple, because, in fact, the basic mechanisms for evolution are quite simple.

Evolution only requires things that interact. That's it! Then, if you want to observe the process, you'll need a perspective, a reference frame, a way to decide what is and what is not something worth observing. This is important, not because the observer changes the process (wrong theory), but because we're limited to how much information we can take in at once. My goal is to communicate the whole thing to you, so I must warn you that I'll be changing perspectives many times.

The first major concept is existence. I won't get too fancy here, if I can describe it, it exists. That does mean, however, that actions or processes can exist while they're happening, then cease to exist when they complete. This is important because it allows me to talk about creation, destruction, and recreation in systems that have a constant number of things in them. Every time some things interact, a new thing is created, the interaction. If you're uncomfortable with this, ask yourself: what is a human? a collection of cells? or the process that holds those cells together?

The next concept is stability. So far we've started with things that interact, then claimed the interactions are new things. I'm going to switch perspective away from the originals now, so we just have some things that are being created, exist for a time, then cease to exist. Stability is a measure of how long these things exist for. More stable things last longer, but as it turns out, there will be more of the things that are more stable. As long as things continue to be created, the less stable ones will be destroyed first, so that there's less of them, meaning more of the stable ones.

Next we have change. I've said that when things interact, there is the creation of another thing. We've gotten to the point now that we have many stable things. What if they interact again before being destroyed? We could certainly call this instant destruction and recreation of a new thing, but as things get more complex their properties may be very similar in the recreated version as in the old one, or the new one may be unstable and be destroyed only to recreate the original. Instead we'll call this "change" and allow change to measure how different the new one is. Creation and destruction are simply big changes. Stable things change, and that change may lead to more or less stability. Again, the ones that become less stable will be destroyed sooner, and we will be left with more of the more stable ones.

Growth. In a sense we already have growth, growth of stability. As things change the less stable fall away, leading to net gains in stability (if it ceases to exist, it's not counted in the average!). I can describe it this way because, if you remember, the things ceasing to exist are interactions; the components of those interactions still exist, and are free to interact with the stable things later. If this makes them unstable, they collapse and the components are again freed up. If it makes them more stable, then they stick around, and have gained new components: they've grown in mass. Also, as the stable interactions continue, we have more of these more stable things, a growth in number.

Let's take a step back now and be a bit more realistic. I can continue on in this vein, adding more and more concepts and taking this all the way to the type of evolution we're more familiar with, but I am making more assumptions as well, so I want to be more explicit about them. You can't just throw some marbles on the ground and get them to evolve intellect. I talk about having more stable things, which means I really need more things! I talk about less stable things ceasing to exist, but that means I need the time it takes for them to finish their cycle of existence. In general, each new concept I introduce will require more resources to work properly. Usually those are number of things involved and time, sometimes they can be energy and flexibility and creativity, like the cultural evolution happening among humans now. As I continue, keep in mind that I'm talking about general, even emergent behavior of large numbers of interactors, over large amounts of time. Remember, humans are composed of trillions of cells each composed of trillions of atoms and it's taken us trillions of seconds to evolve to this point.

Growth doesn't last forever. Large things have increasingly complex internal reactions. The internal environment is not at all the same as the external environment that saw the original growth. This emergent instability will eventually win out, shattering the large thing to let the external environment in. But once it's in, the emergent instability is gone, and there's a chance that the pieces will be semi-stable and be able to continue their growth. Again, the more stable pieces will survive longer, and if there's some functional form that is able to maintain the stability after a break-up, that will be selected for. For example, DNA fits this description; if even the slightest functionality of proto-DNA exists, it will be selected for.

Now we are at the point where I'm talking about natural selection and functional components. There are many other principles I could go over, but I'll let your knowledge of cellular evolution take care of that for now. I'd like to talk about why this all is important, and what you can do with it. I will add one more thing, and that's that this was all done with the simplest things possible, I didn't give them any function at all except emergent functionality of their interactions. If more complex things are involved the rate of development is increased. This can be seen as the rate of cultural evolution is far greater than the rate of biological evolution, because the complexity of human behavior is far greater than the complexity of behavior of the average organism.

Why do we need to know this? Because it works everywhere with everything. If the simplest things organize themselves and evolve, so does everything else, all the time. Look at a project you have, unless it's completely preplanned, there's room for choices and higher levels of success then just completion. One method of growing that project into a huge success is to look at it in terms of its own evolution. Provide it with a few resources that could enhance its function and it will grow much easier. That may mean making it easier for you personally, or if there's someone else working on it, they may do twice the work without realizing it. Maybe you can convince someone else to try a similar project, then learn from their mistakes before you make them (reproduction, survival of the fittest).

I hope I've shown that relating something to the natural world is more than just metaphor. There's an underlying process that works through all things. As long as you take a general perspective, the metaphor is not only applicable, but identical. The natural world may not provide the best solution to any problem, but it does provide a solution to most, perhaps all problems. We can choose to use them, or to prepare to prevent them, because they will happen if you don't pay attention. Everything evolves.