Ascendency reflects the ability of a system to prevail against other configurations. The second law of thermodynamics is interpreted as stating the impossibility, for any ecosystem component, to convert its energetic and material inputs into ordered biomass, i.e. that a fraction of it is always dissipated.
Ecological systems are nonequilibrium systems.
Prigogine's theorem is invoked to show that near equilibrium forces and flows of a steady state system tend to minimize entropy production. This formalization applies to all levels of the biological hierarchy, from cells to biosphere, and even to nonbiological systems. Fitness must be redefined as the ability of organisms to play a coherent role in the network of ecological processes. The former is solved by reducing the image to a set of tokens and applying similarity-based reasoning to them. Unger indulges in all sorts of thought experiments about personal identity.