 An early illustration of how such organismal analogues work can be found in Georgii Gause’s work in the 1930s modelling interspecies competition. Gause wanted a simple, easily manipulable laboratory system that would allow him to “eliminate the complicating influence of numerous secondary factors” and “understand the mechanism of the elementary process of the struggle for existence” (Gause 1934a: 92, 6). In order to represent in physical terms the logistic equation that models carrying capacities for populations, Gause set up an experimental system of populations of two species of paramecia, Paramecium caudatum and P. aurelia, both of which eat bacteria. Gause anticipated that indirect competition between the species would modify one species’ carrying capacity. When the paramecia were physically separated, each population reached growth equilibrium, but when they were put together and made to compete for the same limiting bacterial resources, one species drove the other extinct. This extrapolation from the logistic equation is nowadays known as the competitive exclusion principle, and has become a central principle in ecology (Hardin 1960). The mathematical and experimental model reached the same conclusions.