Law Of Life

Jack London 1901 coined "Law of Life" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Law_of_Life The Law of Life is a term coined by

author An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...

Farley Mowat Farley McGill Mowat, (May 12, 1921 – May 6, 2014) was a Canadian writer and environmentalist. His works were translated into 52 languages, and he sold more than 17 million books. He achieved fame with the publication of his books on the Can ...

in his 1952 book ''

People of the Deer ''People of the Deer'' (published in 1952, revised in 1975) is Canadian author Farley Mowat's first book, and brought him literary recognition. The book is based upon a series of travels the author undertook in the Canadian barren lands, of Kee ...

'', and popularized by

Daniel Quinn Daniel Clarence Quinn (October 11, 1935 – February 17, 2018) was an American author (primarily, novelist and fabulist), cultural critic, and publisher of educational texts, best known for his novel ''Ishmael'', which won the Turner Tomorrow ...

, to denote a universal system of various natural principles, any of which tend to best foster

life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energ ...

—in other words, any of which best guides behavior that tends toward the

reproductive success Reproductive success is an individual's production of offspring per breeding event or lifetime. This is not limited by the number of offspring produced by one individual, but also the reproductive success of these offspring themselves. Reproduct ...

and survival of some particular

gene pool The gene pool is the set of all genes, or genetic information, in any population, usually of a particular species. Description A large gene pool indicates extensive genetic diversity, which is associated with robust populations that can surv ...

. The idea posits that, in general, the most fit

organism In biology, an organism () is any living system that functions as an individual entity. All organisms are composed of cells (cell theory). Organisms are classified by taxonomy into groups such as multicellular animals, plants, and ...

s instinctively behave according to some natural rule (often, these rules vary among and are specific to the

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

). Since ''every'' organism has some instinctive "law" it can follow to be the most reproductively successful, this very notion is a sort of law itself, true of all living beings: thus, the Law of Life. In his 1996

novel A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...

, ''

The Story of B ''The Story of B'' is a 1996 philosophical novel written by Daniel Quinn and published by Bantam Publishing. It chronicles a young priest's movement away from his religion and toward the environmentalist teachings of an international lecturer k ...

'', Quinn writes, "A biologist would probably say what I'm calling the Law of Life is just a collection of

evolutionarily stable strategies An evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) is a strategy (or set of strategies) that is ''impermeable'' when adopted by a population in adaptation to a specific environment, that is to say it cannot be displaced by an alternative strategy (or set of ...

— the universal set of such strategies, in fact." Quinn points out that this is a

physical law Scientific laws or laws of science are statements, based on repeated experiments or observations, that describe or predict a range of natural phenomena. The term ''law'' has diverse usage in many cases (approximate, accurate, broad, or narrow) a ...

, like

gravity In physics, gravity () is a fundamental interaction which causes mutual attraction between all things with mass or energy. Gravity is, by far, the weakest of the four fundamental interactions, approximately 1038 times weaker than the stro ...

, not a commandment like "thou shalt not kill" nor a legislative ruling like "pay taxes". As he puts it, the latter two are written where only man can read them (in books), and that they can be changed by a vote, while the Law of Life is written in the fabric of the universe and cannot be broken. Those who do not follow the law simply won't live. Daniel Quinn {{evolution-stub