Bright light

Progress

The first organisms used chemical energy to operate. Over time a variety of technologies were invented, to allow organisms to capture energy from sunlight, from heat differences, from wind and the tides.

In modern times, technological advances have opened up new energy resources - and can be extracted directly from atoms.

Once useful technologies are developed by living organisms for exploiting environmental resources, they are widely transmitted via inheritance or symbiosis - and are rarely lost again.

The history of life thus has a progressive character - it is a history of progressive technological development.

Progress results in a number of changes - not least organisms get better and better at utilising potential energy resources rapidly.

There are those who argue that "progress does not rule the history of life" - but that is patently utter nonsense: in fact, living systems are characterised by cumulative technological development.