Evolution Driven by Increasing Complexity in a Unified Non-Equilibrium Framework

We propose a hypothesis in which biological evolution is interpreted as a necessary conse- quence of increasing environmental complexity within a unified non-equilibrium framework. Life is modeled as a self-reproducing non-equilibrium structure embedded in a background field D, which represents environmental and many-body complexity. We show that (i) increasing D ne- cessitates evolutionary adaptation through increased structural complexity, and (ii) intelligent life appears to accelerate evolution by actively minimizing the temporal variation of injected non-equilibrium energy, rather than by violating cosmic constraints.