My favorite philosophy professor in college once quipped, "Hydrogen is a colorless, odorless gas that, given 13.7 billion years, turns itself into humans." We live in a remarkable universe. It is not static but changes—evolves—with time. Out of a few simple components generated by the big bang arose myriad complex phenomena: stars, galaxies, planets, minerals, life, culture, religion, science, and technology. Is there a unifying scientific framework for understanding why?
With an interdisciplinary group of scientists and philosophers, I proposed a new macroscopic law of nature that describes the evolution of complex systems—inclusive of but not limited to life—based on selection for function. In this paradigm, Darwinian evolution is but one shining example of a far more general process that also applies to physical and chemical phenomena.
One enthralling example of a non-living evolving system is the mineral world. We've shown how mineral evolution can generate strikingly complex abiotic molecules, and we have recently examined the evolution of minerals over geologic time through the lens of functional information.
Of course, there is something special about life. One of life's key functions is information processing. In our paper "Cells as the first data scientists," Anirudh Prabhu and I describe how concepts from data science—namely, the "information life cycle" and the "data–information–knowledge ecosystem"—are strikingly descriptive of the way that life processes information about its environment. By placing the principles of data science in a broader biological context, we see the activities of data scientists as the latest development in life's ongoing journey to better understand and predict its environment. Finally, we propose that informatics frameworks can be used to understand the similarities and differences between abiotic complex evolving systems and life.
Artwork is a mural hanging at NASA Ames
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