ABSTRACT
This book began with a statement of paradox: Natural selection in favor of aging for its own sake is impossible within the framework of classical neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. In the first five chapters, I have arrayed the evidence that aging has all the characteristics of an evolutionary adaptation in its own right, not an artifact lurking in a selection shadow, as Medawar supposed, nor a pleiotropic sideeffect of selection for fertility, as theorized by Williams.
