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Others argue that extending evolutionary ideas about function to non-living systems is an overreach. The quantitative value that measures information in this new approach is not only relative — it changes depending on context — it’s impossible to calculate. For this and other reasons, critics have charged that the new theory cannot be tested, and therefore is of little use.

The work taps into an expanding debate about how biological evolution fits within the normal framework of science. The theory of Darwinian evolution by natural selection helps us to understand how living things have changed in the past. But unlike most scientific theories, it can’t predict much about what is to come. Might embedding it within a meta-law of increasing complexity let us glimpse what the future holds?