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Link to original content: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03061-y
How purposeless physics underlies purposeful life
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How purposeless physics underlies purposeful life

Evolution by natural selection peerlessly describes how life’s complexity develops — but can it be explained in terms of physics? A new approach suggests it can.
  1. George F. R. Ellis

    1. George F. R. Ellis is in the Mathematics Department of the University of Cape Town, Rondebosch 7700, Cape Town, South Africa.

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Everything we see around us, including ourselves, emerges out of physical interactions between fundamental particles. But because physics does not have any concept of function, it cannot distinguish the emergent functional features that are central to biology1 from random fluctuations. The complex structures of proteins, all of which have emerged to perform specific biological functions, are a case in point2,3. In addition, the laws of physics are timeless and eternal, unaffected by historical events, so cannot be used to describe how the past evolution of species affects their present and future. Writing in Nature, Sharma et al.4 present what they call assembly theory as a way to fill this gap, providing a framework to unify descriptions of evolutionary selection across physics and biology.

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Nature 622, 247-249 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03061-y

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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