The concept of a fitness function (or objective function) is central to artificial life systems. The fitness function is used to drive a given artificial evolution process to create synthetic organisms capable of performing a given task. However, fitness functions, even aggregate high-level ones, drive evolving systems to particular solutions and place a ceiling on innovation and complexity. Natural evolution does not drive organisms toward particular solutions to problems. There is no motive force for evolution in our universe beyond that of adherence to physical law. This is a subtle point: when modern organisms are viewed in a local context it does appear that they are evolving to optimize particular abilities that will help them survive. This is not the case in a global sense. In fact, the pressure to optimize a given ability comes from the current state of a given population. The only fundamental selective pressure is the ability of structures to adhere to physical law. Stochastic events initiated the appearance of features that we might view as adaptive traits, and it is the local evolution of these traits that much of evolutionary theory is based upon.