Science

Given time life tends to complexify, there's some interesting research actually suggesting that self-organization and growing complexity might be an inevitable solution.

There's a recent hypothesis that any system comprising many diverse parts and operating in an environment that selects for certain functions will evolve toward states of increasing functional information. In other words, it will become increasingly complex and heterogeneous. And the study argues that it's not just biological systems that are subject to evolutionary processes, but any physical systems with these properties. There's also some fascinating research happening with simulations, like Game of Life, where emergent complexity and self-organization end up emerging all on their own.

This study found that when a cellular grid is subjected to selective pressure for a certain function, particles organize into stable, propagating structures, such as gliders, which support the desired logical operations. Coherent information-carrying entities emerge across the spatial grid, and as these travelling objects collide with one another, they perform elementary logical operations as a result of their interactions. Computation emerges as the evolutionary answer to the problem of coordination and communication across a spatially distributed system.

Another study provides the link to move the system from isolated particles to structured complexity. The research shows how self-replicating hierarchical entities form out of random particle arrangements. Unlike the simple gliders which merely traverse the grid, these complex entities contain and propagate the information needed to reproduce themselves. They embody a sort of digital DNA. Rather than being monolithic blocks, replicators are organized out of discrete interacting parts, each doing its own specific job.

Evolution in a digital medium proceeds along a recursive path, with simple particles aggregating to form primitive logic gates, and these gates clustering to form replicators. Over time, groups of these entities could aggregate and cooperate, forming the complex memory and processing units that are able to do universal computation.

This study shows there is no need to program any specific end goal either. When random programs are introduced into a sufficiently complex environment without a clear fitness landscape, the system will nonetheless generate self-replicators. They emerge from a combination of sheer chance and a predisposition of certain code-fragments toward interaction and self-modifying potential. Once the first replicator appears, there arises a natural tendency toward greater structural and functional complexity because replication provides both the material and the selective pressure for further evolution.

These studies demonstrate how a simple system driven by a steady external energy source, can extract complexity from simplicity. Whether it's the sun or some different energy source, the underlying mechanic is the same. With sufficient iterations, these simple principles force a phase transition in the nature of the system, so that a number of alterations coalesce to form organized structures. It's a process of quantity transforming into quality.