How Nature Tinkers to Create the Future

What it is

Evolution and Tinkering by Francois Jacob is a real thought provoker. And it’s short.  No wonder it has been so often cited.  E.g.:

“Evolution behaves like a tinkerer who, during eons upon eons, would slowly modify his work, unceasingly retouching it, cutting here, lengthening there, seizing the opportunities to adapt it progressively to its new use….  As was discussed by LeviStrauss, none of the materials at the tinkerer's disposal has a precise and definite function. Each can be used in a number of different ways. In contrast with the engineer's tools, those of the tinkerer cannot be defined by a project. What these objects have in common is ‘it might well be of some use.’  For what? That depends on the opportunities.”

Our Brandeis colleague Gary Jefferson interprets Jacobs’ five elements of change in his economics (!) course “Change on Earth: Evolution, Innovation and Growth.”   He sees them relating to “all biotic-abiotic change on Earth.”

Jefferson interprets these five elements as:

• Everything is comprised of collections of atoms; change result from recombinations of atoms;
• Nature functions by integration to create systems;
• Living entities are opens systems with a flux of energy, matter, and information exchanges across the biotic-abiotic boundary; 
• Change moves along a hierarchy of complexity;
• Every more complex system results from the imposition of an additional constraint on a previous more simple system....  Some, but not all characteristics of the simple system remain valid in the more complex system along with the additional constraint.  (i.e., the constraint is something new that enables the old system to function more effectively).

“I view the paper as setting the stage for an inclusive model of change,” Jefferson says.  “As such, Darwinian natural selection, technical change, entropy, etc. are embedded in a common, unified system of change.  All change transpires in accord with the 5 Elements, seemingly through these 5 stages.

“Also, as a theory/law of everything – ‘Everything that exists and that had once existed is what it had been previously with the addition of a constraint’ – where the constraint is a mutation, invention, the passage of time, the application of one or all of the laws of nature, e.g., the Surfside Condominium with the addition of time, entropy, the law of gravity – likewise with Covid19, [and your] stairs to the water.

“This is my takeaway.  Make (some) sense?”

Evolution and Tinkering by Francois Jacob.  Science, New Series, Volume 196, Issue 4295 (Jun. 10, 1977), 1161-1166.

Why it is important

The argument:  Darwinian natural selection, technological change, etc. are embedded in a common, unified system of change.  All change transpires in accord with the 5 Elements, seemingly through these 5 stages."