But maybe not in the formal sense. Phys.org has news about a newly discovered … recognized … oh I dunno … law of nature:
A paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences describes “a missing law of nature,” recognizing for the first time an important norm within the natural world’s workings.
In essence, the new law states that complex natural systems evolve to states of greater patterning, diversity, and complexity. In other words, evolution is not limited to life on Earth, it also occurs in other massively complex systems, from planets and stars to atoms, minerals, and more.
So it’s a proposal that we recognize systems satisfying certain requirements will move forwards as a result of ‘selection for function’, of which there are three types: stability, energy, and novelty.
Fascinating stuff. It should be interesting to see how useful application of this law might be in guiding us to new discoveries.
And maybe this explains platypuses.
