The Evolution of Everything - Living or Not
New Law of Nature Changes Science, the Humanities, and Religion
Just as the fixed stars were once attached to the dome of heaven and later became fixed in the gravity wells of space-time, they are now the creatures and generators of cosmic evolution.
Many times, the most stunning and consequential events are overlooked when they happen. This week’s publication of “On the roles of function and selection in evolving systems,” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, is such an event. The researchers propose a missing law of nature – the law of increasing functional information. This “missing law of nature,” as it has been called, is just as significant as Darwin’s notion of evolution which it surpasses.
There has been and continues to be a disconnect between looking at the universe as something governed by the intellectually elegant laws of physics and as a more poetic appreciation of the beauty and unfolding of everything around us. What this new law proposes is that everything is in a dynamic state of evolution - that non-living systems show principles of adaptation and development. We will never see living and non-living systems as somehow apart from each other, but rather as on a continuum.
Titled the "law of increasing functional information," it holds that evolving systems, biological and non-biological, always form from numerous interacting building blocks like atoms or cells, and that processes exist - such as cellular mutation - that generate many different configurations.” - Reuters, October 16, 2023
“In essence, the new law states that complex natural systems evolve to states of greater patterning, diversity, and complexity. In other words, evolution is not limited to life on Earth, it also occurs in other massively complex systems, from planets and stars to atoms, minerals, and more.” – Neuroscience News
We haven’t really thought of Darwinian evolution’s survival of the fittest as something that would apply to all physical systems from galaxies to minerals deep within the earth. How is that possible? In their breakthrough article, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on October 16, 2023, the researchers summarized their work in the article’s opening Significance section:
“We suggest that all evolving systems - including but not limited to life - are composed of diverse components that can combine into configurational states that are then selected for or against based on function. We then identify the fundamental sources of selection - static persistence, dynamic persistence, and novelty generation - and propose a time-asymmetric law that states that the functional information of a system will increase over time when subjected to selection for function(s).”
At the conclusion of the Abstract the authors declare:
“Accordingly, we propose a “law of increasing functional information”: The functional information of a system will increase (i.e., the system will evolve) if many different configurations of the system undergo selection for one or more functions.”
Last summer (on July 25, 2023) one of the researchers, Robert M Hazen, PhD, gave a preview of the paper at a presentation at the Tellus ScienceMuseum in Cartersville, Georgia. It is recorded in this video. The sound quality is not the greatest. Dr. Hazen’s microphone did not get turned for the first 60 seconds, but it gives a great overview of what he calls the Universal Law of Evolving Systems.
Predictive Mineralogy
Usually, we don’t think of rock as something that is dynamic. Rocks and minerals are examples of things that never change in our everyday experience. However, if we look at them in their historical trajectory, we see that they are produced and distributed during planetary formation and that they have a dynamic development over hundreds of millions of years within the planet. They have an evolutionary history. The new discipline of mineral informatics is changing mineralogy from a descriptive effort to a predictive science. The formation of planets and the materials of which they are made changes over time and is far from uniform. This new approach is guided by data science that derives data from the creation of minerals and their dispersion. The data is then transformed by network theory into information about the specific evolution of minerals and it can also predict where you are likely to find them.
In August 2023, Shaunna Morrison, PdD gave this presentation on data driven mineralogy at the Tellus Science Museum in Cartersville, Georgia. This is really worth watching if you have never thought that minerals can evolve. It also shows the ways in which you can find mineral deposits. Additionally, this video is a great way to learn about data science and how network theory can create amazing information from seemingly disparate data. No “math brain” is required.
Random Chance or Evolutionary Design?
One of the great social controversies is whether the universe is the product of cosmic chance or whether the design that we perceive is intentional. The Law of Increasing Functional Information will also recast this long-standing debate. It shows that the development of the universe is not random but follows certain evolutionary principles. It also shows that the design we perceive is not necesarily the product of a conscious creator.
The controversy often boils down to a simplistic dichotomy. Somehow God is either pulling the strings or God does not exist. Believers argue that without God there can be no morality. However, much of this controversy depends on what our notion of God is.
Christian belief rests on religous experience and the revelation of God. Evangelical Christians literalists have only one rule of faith, which is the Bible. There is no other truth because ultimate truth is revealed in the Bible. There is the literal God of the Bible who created everything from nothing in six days, saw that it was good, and rested on the seventh day.
Combining faith and reason (faith seeking understanding), Catholicism and many Protestant denominations posit a transcendent and immanent God who is separate from creation and who may be the source of the “Big Bang” and the consequent evolution of the universe. From ancient times there is Plato’s one supreme God who is the “Form (manifestation) of the Good”. In the 20th century we have Whitehead’s Process God (Process Theism) in which God - in oversimplified terms - is the result and driver of the cosmic process.
Animism is an ancient religious perspective that sees a divine power or spirit inherent in inanimate objects. New Age secular people often talk of the “Universe” in an animistic way, which implies that either fate or some conscious volitional force inherent in matter and energy can affect our lives. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam see God as radically “other” and transcendent from physical matter and energy. Some philosophers consider Buddhism closer to a process notion of God.
A New Scientific and Humanistic Age
The Law of Increasing Functional Information allows us to see that the design which we perceive is really a series of dynamic adaptations.
This will change our secular and religious perspective on the patterns and designs of all living and non-living systems. It will also move us from a more limited notion of Darwinian evolution as the result of natural selection to a process in which all living and non-living systems are constantly in evolutionary development on a more rapid timescale than we had imagined.
The network arrays of data generated by data science show that complex relationships can become guides to understanding adaptation and the direction of change in all facets of the universe. In turn, this will affect all human endeavors beyond the boundaries of science. Network theory and data analysis are the basis of current neuroscience, but they have already begun to transform the social and behavioral sciences.
Just as the fixed stars were once attached to the dome of heaven and later became fixed in gravity wells of space-time, they are now the creatures and generators of cosmic evolution.
The boundary between animate and inanimate things will no longer be so sharp as we move forward. Viruses - which are inanimate outside a living system but animate inside a living system - will be less of a puzzle. Instead, they will mark a transition zone.
Just as each age of scientific development – Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, Einstein - has revised philosophical and religious perspectives; data science, network theory, and the Law of Increasing Functional Information are creating a new world for the poetic expression of awe and wonder in a constantly evolving and dynamic universe.
We will never see the sun, moon, and stars in the same way again.