ARRIVAL OF THE FITTEST

In Arrival of the Fittest, evolutionary biologist Andreas Wagner (University Zurich) offers a radical answer to one of the most persistent and intriguing questions in the life sciences: How does innovation in nature happen?

Darwin’s theory of natural selection explains what happens once innovations arise—to preserve and propagate those adaptations that are helpful. But it doesn’t tell us how those innovations come to be in the first place. In the absence of a good explanation, we’ve defaulted to attributing evolutionary change to random trial and error. But even Darwin acknowledged that accident was not a very satisfying answer. Genetics pioneer Hugo de Vries would express the problem this way: “Natural selection may explain the survival of the fittest, but it cannot explain the arrival of the fittest.”
Andreas Wagner is an award-winning evolutionary biologist working at the leading edge of what can rightly be called a revolution in scientific thinking. In his research at the University of Zurich, Wagner found that life upgrades itself far faster than was previously thought possible. Integrating recent knowledge about the behavior of molecules and the existence of vast genetic networks with more traditional Darwinian thinking, THE ARRIVAL OF THE FITTEST shows how adaptations are not driven by chance, but rather by a set of laws. To create and modify itself, nature discovers new mechanisms by operating by these laws—shortcuts that allow the complex and novel molecules used by living organisms to be created in a tiny fraction of the time they would need using the trial-and-error of random variance alone.
Examples of biological creativity are all around us. Wagner offers a striking new account of where those innovations in nature come from, and what they can tell us about human creativity as well. A revolutionary account of innovation in nature, ARRIVAL OF THE FITTEST begins to answer some of evolution’s oldest questions.

Andreas Wagner is a professor in the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zurich in Switzerland and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. He is the author of more than 100 scientific publications and two monographs. His book Paradoxical Life won the gold medal for best science book in the 2010 Association of Independent Publishers Book Awards. Wagner received his Ph.D. in 1995 at Yale University, where his research won the J.S. Nicholas prize for best dissertation in his field. He has lectured widely worldwide and held research fellowships at several institutions, such as the Institute for Advanced Studies in Berlin, Germany, and the Institut des Hautes Etudes in Bures-sur-Yvette, France. Wagner is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences and a member of the Faculty of 1000 Biology, as well as of the editorial boards of several scientific journals that include Bioessays and BMC Evolutionary Biology. An Austrian-born U.S. citizen, he lives with his wife and their son in Zurich.