Philosophers like Murray Bookchin argued that the natural world tends towards greater and greater diversity. Now scientists in collaboration with philosophers argue that this tendency to complexify could constitute a natural law of the universe.
Significance The universe is replete with complex evolving systems, but the existing macroscopic physical laws do not seem to adequately describe these systems. Recognizing that the identification of conceptual equivalencies among disparate phenomena were foundational to developing previous laws of nature, we approach a potential “missing law” by looking for equivalencies among evolving systems. 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).
Abstract Physical laws—such as the laws of motion, gravity, electromagnetism, and thermodynamics—codify the general behavior of varied macroscopic natural systems across space and time. We propose that an additional, hitherto-unarticulated law is required to characterize familiar macroscopic phenomena of our complex, evolving universe. An important feature of the classical laws of physics is the conceptual equivalence of specific characteristics shared by an extensive, seemingly diverse body of natural phenomena. Identifying potential equivalencies among disparate phenomena—for example, falling apples and orbiting moons or hot objects and compressed springs—has been instrumental in advancing the scientific understanding of our world through the articulation of laws of nature. A pervasive wonder of the natural world is the evolution of varied systems, including stars, minerals, atmospheres, and life. These evolving systems appear to be conceptually equivalent in that they display three notable attributes: 1) They form from numerous components that have the potential to adopt combinatorially vast numbers of different configurations; 2) processes exist that generate numerous different configurations; and 3) configurations are preferentially selected based on function. We identify universal concepts of selection—static persistence, dynamic persistence, and novelty generation—that underpin function and drive systems to evolve through the exchange of information between the environment and the system. 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.
The property they described is called “emergence” and is indeed a fascinating mystery: How can simple rules give birth to complex systems?
However I really dislike the way this paper is framed “We made a casual observation that we propose should be recognized as a fundamental law of nature just like Newton laws”. The way the fundamental laws were proposed was not by stating them fundamental but by describing them precisely then using them to make measurable predictions. Then people called it fundamental if indeed it allows to create a lot of useful models of the world.
Complexity is studied in information theory, in chaos theory, fields of mathematics and information theory. We have tools to describe these and the only formulas in the article seem to just rehash known notions unless I am missing something?
The big question IMO is to prove if complexity is a real thing or if it is an illusion that humans have when confronted with non-recognized patterns. Most humans won’t recognize a high complexity in a spiral or in the sequence of natural digits, despite both being infinite and non-repeatable. Yet we find the mandelbort fractal complex despite it being generated by as simple algorithms. Maybe it is just us who see complexity in some information-poor things? Or maybe complexity is a feature of the universe that is revealed by some simple algorithms? Maybe it is a core conceptual failure of our intellectual and mathematical models and we should recognize the Mandelbrot set as one of the fundamental geometrical shapes like circles and lines, and suddenly complexity would disappear?
It is indeed a philosophical question, but I don’t think philosophers should venture in it without being armed with a solid background in what we already know of information theory and complexity, which is not much, but the best starting point we have.