The CCCC Principle

An interesting quotation follows.

" Science reinforces my manager's notion with something called Krause's Hypothesis or the CCCC Principle ("Complete competitors cannot coexist). Howard Ensign Evans in Wasp Farm explains it this way: "The theory behind is that if two species do in fact do everything alike--live in the same place, feed on the same food, and so forth--one of them is bound to do something very slightly better than the other and will, over a period of time, completely eliminate the other."

Here, you'd better open your notebooks, because Mr. Evans goes on with a piece of advice to beleaguered species, and if you're having a little trouble you may wish to note it down: "But if in fact they impinge on their environment just a little differently in some respect, they can coexist indefinitely."

There is a world of useful advice for all of us in that sentence. If, for example, you are a welterweight fighter who is being completely eliminated, you might think about taking on lightweights. If you are an actor who finds too many living in the same place and feeding on the same food, you might try directing or producing or becoming, as one actor did, the governor of California. "

A Studied Madness by Heywood Hale Broun, Second Chance Press, 1979, Pages 266-7