Natural systems may drive toward order alongside universal decay

A proposed physical law suggests that minerals, stars and living tissues evolve by retaining configurations that work, adding a counterweight to the relentless increase of disorder.

When heat warms an ice sculpture, the rigid bonds holding its water molecules in place begin to separate, reducing an intricate shape to a formless puddle.¹² Left alone, physical objects deteriorate, iron tools flake into rust, and organic bodies break down into soil, water and gas.¹³ For more than a century and a half, physicists have treated this relentless drift toward disorder as an unbending rule of the universe, establishing that energy dissipates and entropy rises as time moves forward.¹⁴

Yet looking across the history of the cosmos reveals an opposing pattern that seems just as widespread. From a hot, nearly uniform fog of simple particles after the big bang, the universe gradually assembled complex atoms, gathered them into stars, forged dozens of chemical elements, and produced thousands of distinct mineral varieties.⁵¹ On Earth, collections of organic molecules organized into living single cells, which diversified over billions of years into multicellular plants, complex animal bodies, and societies capable of composing symphonies and writing software.¹⁴

Understanding how structured complexity flourishes inside an environment defined by decay is the central problem addressed in a new book by mineralogist Robert M. Hazen and astrobiologist Michael L. Wong, both researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science Earth and Planets Laboratory in Washington.⁴¹ In their volume, titled Time’s Second Arrow: Evolution, Order, and a New Law of Nature, published by W. W. Norton in February 2026, Robert M. Hazen and Michael L. Wong suggest that science requires an uncodified natural principle to account for the steady emergence of organization across both living and nonliving systems.¹⁵

How can complex patterns form in a world ruled by entropy?

Intricate systems emerge whenever an environment repeatedly generates varied arrangements and continuously sifts out the ones that survive best. The basic causal sequence requires three distinct conditions operating together. First, the underlying components of a system, whether they are subatomic particles, chemical atoms, musical notes or genetic codes, must have the capacity to combine in a vast variety of possible arrangements.¹⁴ Second, the system must possess an active mechanism to generate fresh combinations over time.¹² Third, there must be environmental selection pressures that filter these configurations, preserving those that serve a specific purpose, such as enduring physical stress or gathering energy, while allowing fragile or ineffective arrangements to fall apart.¹⁴

When those three prerequisites align, a system naturally preserves stable innovations and builds upon them. In the prebiotic universe, for instance, cosmic forces continually shook and reassembled raw chemical elements. Most random combinations proved ephemeral, yet the few molecular structures capable of withstanding extreme heat and radiation endured long enough to participate in subsequent chemical reactions.⁵⁴ Each enduring form effectively narrowed the field of chaotic possibilities, setting the stage for subsequent generations of even more intricate assemblies.

To formalize this mechanism, Robert M. Hazen and Michael L. Wong formulate what they designate the law of increasing functional information.⁶⁴ They define functional information as a mathematical measure of how rare and effective a particular configuration is compared with all the ways its component parts could have been assembled.¹⁴ The concept relies on a formulation introduced in 2003 by Nobel laureate Jack Szostak, who used it to quantify the information contained in biological sequences capable of performing specific biochemical tasks.⁴ When a system explores trillion-configuration spaces and settles into the tiny fraction that successfully accomplishes a task, such as holding water or catalyzing a reaction, its functional information rises sharply.

Where does evolution happen beyond living organisms?

Evolutionary processes operate across the entire physical universe wherever nonliving matter meets environmental selection pressures.³⁴ Robert M. Hazen discovered this pattern while tracing the deep history of Earth minerals.⁵⁷ In the earliest cosmic eras, only a single mineral species, a microscopic interstellar diamond, existed within stellar dust.⁵ As stars condensed, fused lighter elements and exploded, the heat and pressure generated approximately 25 new mineral varieties.⁵ Once planets formed, geological forces like tectonic shifting, volcanism, and later the metabolic activity of living organisms mixed chemical elements into thousands of combinations, bringing Earth modern inventory to roughly 6,000 distinct mineral species.⁵³

According to Robert M. Hazen and Michael L. Wong, mineral diversification illustrates the same universal evolutionary rules seen in biology. The researchers divide selection into three primary categories: static persistence, dynamic persistence, and novelty generation. Static persistence describes an arrangement ability to retain its stable crystalline or chemical form without breaking down into ambient entropy.⁴ Dynamic persistence occurs when open systems, such as a swirling hurricane, a burning star, or a living organism, continually take in external energy and matter to preserve an organized internal state while venting waste heat outside.⁴ Novelty generation occurs when dynamic systems explore new operational states, discovering unexpected configurations that open up fresh ways to endure.⁴

In human culture and technology, the authors identify identical evolutionary dynamics at work. Human language arose because vocal cords could produce countless vocal noises, yet communities retained only the specific phonetic patterns that communicated useful information.¹² Similarly, computer software and artificial intelligence have progressed through generations of trial, error and selection, evolving from primitive algorithmic scripts to systems that solve complex puzzles, translate human speech and engage in multi-turn conversations.⁶⁴

What are the limits of this proposed universal law?

The proposed law of increasing functional information represents a descriptive conceptual framework rather than a proven mechanical theory. Critics and peer reviewers have pointed out that Robert M. Hazen and Michael L. Wong struggle to demonstrate how their principle can reliably predict new experimental outcomes rather than catalog past evolutionary developments.⁶³ Furthermore, defining and calculating functional information in messy natural environments remains challenging, because determining what constitutes a working function often involves subjective definitions of utility.¹⁴ The authors themselves acknowledge that they have not resolved all the thorny theoretical questions regarding how localized increases in order reconcile with the second law of thermodynamics, which demands that net disorder across an entire closed system must always climb.¹²

Physicists have debated whether an additional law of nature is truly necessary to account for self-organizing complexity. Many researchers maintain that the standard second law of thermodynamics already accommodates localized order, because open systems can generate intricate structures provided they disperse enough heat to raise entropy in their surrounding environment.⁴³ Under this conventional view, emergent complexity is an energetic consequence of entropy relentless flow rather than evidence of a competing physical imperative.¹⁴

What could this framework change across other sciences?

If the law of increasing functional information gains mathematical footing and experimental backing, it could transform how scientists look for extraterrestrial life and treat human disease. In astrobiology, Michael L. Wong argues that search strategies should look beyond familiar carbon-based biochemistry.⁷³ If selection for function drives nonliving chemical systems toward increasingly rare configurations, robotic planetary probes could identify alien life by detecting physical systems displaying unusually high levels of functional information, regardless of what molecules make them up.³⁷

In medicine, researchers have begun investigating whether the progression of malignant tumors follows similar evolutionary dynamics.⁴⁷ Under this perspective, cancerous cells isolate themselves from normal physiological constraints, treating the human body as an ecological niche where they evolve through successive stages of increased functional resilience.⁴ Understanding how cancer ratchets up its functional information could suggest novel therapeutic approaches aimed at disrupting the cellular configurations that enable tumor persistence.⁴⁶

This piece was prepared from the book Time’s Second Arrow: Evolution, Order, and a New Law of Nature and public records; the authors have not been interviewed.

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1. 1 U us.list-manage.com Document · us.list-manage.com A new direction for ‘time’s arrow’ See the source
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3. 3 G goodreads.com Third-party reporting · goodreads.com Time's Second Arrow: Evolution, Order, and a New Law of… See the source
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