EvolutionOfAging.com
DESTA and EOS by Kevin Brown

Why does aging exist?

The Dis-Economies of Scale Theory of Aging (DESTA) presents senescence as an adaptive, programmatic continuation of growth termination: maintained by sexual selection, tuned by natural selection, shaped by ecology, and implemented through central physiological regulation.

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DESTA

DESTA explains why senescence exists, how it is maintained by evolution, what ecological functions it serves, and how it is physiologically implemented.

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EOS

The Evolution of Selection presents selection as a family of physical, algorithmic, and cognitive processes that emerged across the history of life.

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Full Papers

Both full manuscripts are available through Zenodo and included here as Markdown downloads for review and citation.

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A unified framework for aging

DESTA is not simply a theory about why organisms age. It is a unified theory of aging that explains why senescence exists, how it is maintained by evolution, what ecological functions it serves, and how it is physiologically implemented.

The theory links growth termination, sexual selection, ecological mortality, predator-prey stability, lineage persistence, and hypothalamic regulation within a single explanatory framework.

Central principle: sexual selection maintains senescence; natural selection tunes its rate.

The broader framework

EOS provides the broader conceptual foundation. It treats selection not as one monolithic force, but as layered modes of selection: physical, algorithmic, and cognitive. DESTA applies this broader view to aging, growth termination, mate choice, and senescence.