The Wonder of Life No. 1: Structure and Emergence

Life operates within constraints, shaped by the structured nature of the universe, yet it finds remarkable ways to thrive through randomness and adaptation. Agriculture is a prime example of this delicate balance—farmers must navigate an ever-changing environment, adjusting to shifting weather patterns, soil conditions, and unpredictable challenges in an effort to secure high crop yields. When a lab at MIT offered them a controlled environment with perfect conditions, the response was unexpected. It turns out that much of agricultural evolution has been shaped by the constraints of daily cycles— the sun rising and setting, seasons changing, and natural fluctuations in climate. Plants, over time, have evolved within these boundaries, adapting their growth, metabolism, and even dormancy patterns to fit this rhythm.

Risto Mikkulainen, in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab, conducted an experiment to test what happens when these constraints are removed . By simulating perfect conditions for a basil plant—continuous light, ideal nutrients, and optimized growth parameters—they found that the plant did not need to “sleep” at all. Not only did it grow larger, but it also developed a richer taste. This suggests that some biological limits are not intrinsic necessities but rather evolutionary compromises made in response to the external world.

This raises a profound question: how much of what we consider “natural” is simply an adaptation to external constraints rather than an inherent requirement for life? The structured universe, with its laws and patterns, creates the boundaries within which randomness and adaptation occur. Evolution does not take place in an arbitrary void but within a fixed structure that guides its possibilities. The interplay between necessity and chance leads to fascinating emergent properties—traits that would never appear without the tension between order and randomness.

The wonder of life lies in this duality: it conforms to structure, yet within those constraints, it explores novel paths. Evolution is not just survival within boundaries; it is an ongoing experiment of what is possible when structure meets chance. Perhaps, by altering the constraints—whether in agriculture, biology, or human life—we might uncover new potentials, revealing possibilities that nature never had the chance to explore.

Charles Darwin’s 1837 Tree of Life sketch from his First Notebook on Transmutation of Species, mysteriously stolen from Cambridge Library in 2000 and anonymously returned years later.