Monomorphic

How is the genesis of truly new forms possible?

Classical scientific thinking would have us believe that the principle of cause and effect explains the world. Thus I’m led to follow the trail of potential causes when I look for the reasons behind the emergence of something. Why did the wheat grow taller in one spot than in another? Investigate the soil composition and the farmer’s practices. Why do I get sunburned easily, but my friend doesn’t? Investigate the composition of the skin. Why is the American car industry not doing well? Look at the changing terms of trade and the changing competitiveness of other countries’ car industries over time, and so on.

If we follow this line of thinking, we are led to believe that all kinds of phenomena are basically reflections or refractions of other phenomena, linked together by the laws of the universe. Phenomena would thus undergo constant transformations, but there would be no synthesis of truly new phenomena. There would be no possible cause that could be their origin.

But even in this reactive world view, we sometimes say that things happen by chance. We use this term when the reasons behind a phenomenon are so numerous or hard to trace that they mostly defy our cause and effect logic. In theory, for example, it would be possible for the first cell or self-replicating strand of DNA to arise by chance in the “primordial soup”. And in theory, significant phenomena such as hurricanes can arise from minute perturbations of the air. Once the initial “chance configuration” of these phenomena has arisen somewhere, the emergent, stable phenomenon takes on a character of its own, seemingly severed from the conditions that spawned it. The situation is not unlike Conway’s game of life, for example, where the right starting conditions can give rise to extremely complicated patterns of evolution, even though the rules are deceptively simple. It also has similarities with group theory, where four simple axioms give rise to a rich but finite system of finite simple groups, culminating in the “monster group” whose size is around 10^53 elements. Here, the four axioms themselves are the chance condition that yields the massive new phenomenon.

But even though such phenomena originating in “chance” can be highly decoupled from their origins, the question continues to bother us: is it possible for truly new phenomena to be spawned in this universe, and if so, what is their origin?