A STUDY OF LOGICAL CONTOURS AS AN ORIGIN OF REASON (Causes of "Information") Marcus Abundis' INTRODUCTION This essay explores the evolutionary dynamics of active agents (Life) as influenced by natural selection, and therein, a likely ab initio unfolding of an agent's reasoning, logic, or informational wherewithal — that is, basic consciousness or intelligence. Earth's entropic unfolding (environs) affords a stage upon which all Life arises. As such, Earthly entropy must be mapped before a notion of agency or living informatics can be posited. Earthly dynamics, vis-à-vis active agents, are shown below. Figure A depicts Selection Vectors around an existential niche (agency) separated by a Bounded Affordance line. That three-fold constraint presents imagined right-ward, left-ward, and down-ward selection forces on active agents. Any combination and/or amount of those forces can impinge upon the afforded agency, at any time. Evolutionary biology calls the result of this existential constraint-affordance putting, divisive, and directional selection (Figure B). Hence, selection presents three innate or observed "logical contours" to which agents must conform, or become extinct. Figure A: Three Selection Vectors and three agent responses, as a constrained-contested space. Selection Vectors fight freeze * (niche/agency flight Figure B: Classic effects between selection forces and agent responses, equally labeled stabilizing, disruptive, and directional selection. Each result depicts a distinct "logical contour," affording de facto styles of agent behavior, and thus "agent logic," to support related behaviors. But to claim that such logic may exist requires the presence of agent memories "to be reasoned with." With no extant memory or "content," reason or logic is, a priori, not possible. If those three vectors captured the full range of dynamic possibilities for all agents, and if agents behaved passively vis-à-vis those vectors, our map would be