Wiley, Edward O., and Daniel R. Brooks. “Victims of history—a nonequilibrium approach to evolution.” Systematic Biology 31, no. 1 (1982): 1-24.
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Evolution may be described as a nonequilibrium process involving the conversion of information from one form to another and the maintenance of old or forging of new reproductive networks. Species participate in nonequilibrium processes because they have properties of closure and because evolution is a historically irreversible phenomenon. Speciation is a process which consolidates available potential information into two or more stored information systems. Character change and the history of a clade are highly correlated because potential information is constrained by its own evolutionary history. Thus new and potential information may be converted into stored information only to the extent that this new and potential information is compatible with the ancestral information system or can find expression in an alternate ontogenetic pathway. All modes of speciation as well as anagenesis follow the second law of thermodynamics and may be described by a summary equation which charts the changes of entropy states of information and cohesion over time. We suggest that some empirical evidence corroborates our theory and that the research programs involved in further studying nonequilibrium evolution are largely in place now.