Sublime

According to the theory of evolution, all biological entities – from elephants and oak trees to cells and DNA molecules – are composed of smaller and simpler parts that ceaselessly combine and separate.

"(Genetic engineering) faces our society with problems unprecedented, not only in the history of science, but of life on the Earth. It places in human hands the capacity to redesign living organisms, the products of some three billion years of evolution.... Up to now, living organisms have evolved very slowly, and new forms have had plenty of

studies of self-organization may shed some light on how life behaves, they say little to nothing about how life arose or developed.

What amount of change in biological classification might have resulted from such searing selection? Some of the descendants might have differed from the ancestor in its domain of life or formed a new kingdom, or perhaps a novel phylum, class, or order. Yet none of those appeared.

A surprising but compelling conclusion is that Darwin’s mechanism has been wildly overrated—it is incapable of producing much biological change at all.

assembly theory, a way of differentiating life from nonlife, not by its chemistry but by its complexity.

Traditionally, science seeks order by understanding the simplest parts of a system. How does a single gas particle behave given a certain temperature? Which gene in our DNA determines eye color? Scientists then try to develop theories that explain more general observations based on their detailed understanding of the individual parts.

Traditionally, a bear’s nose and its den would have been classified as living and non-living entities, respectively. But that distinction is not rooted in any significant difference. The role of the bear’s nose is fundamentally no different from that of its den. Neither is a replicator, though new instances of them are continually being made. Both