Life Finds a Way

by Andreas Wagner

  Landscape exploration is more than just a metaphor for creation. We know this for two reasons.

  First, in biology we can now map these landscapes in deep molecular detail. They help us understand the evolutionary paths of proteins like beta-lactamase toward greater antibiotic resistance. And well-mapped adaptive landscapes can do more than explain creative evolution. They may even help future scientists predict it, just like a detailed map can show a mountaineer where the highest peaks are and how to get there.1

  The second reason is that many acts of creation are acts of problem solving. A gleaming quartz crystal embodies a solution to the problem of finding a stable arrangement of silicon and oxygen atoms. A metabolic enzyme breaking down glucose has solved the problem of harvesting energy from carbon bonds. An ammonite has solved the problem of swimming with minimal drag resistance within the confines of its spiral architecture. And creative machines can use evolution’s problem-solving strategies to invent new technology and compose delightful music.

  Today we know that the robotic hill climbing of natural selection is a poor strategy for solving hard problems. Conquering a complex landscape needs autonomous explorers, be they organisms with DNA mutations or human trailblazers, who take off in different directions to create diverse solutions. It needs mechanisms like genetic recombination and remote association that promise access to distant peaks. And it needs mechanisms like exploratory play and genetic drift that can descend a landscape’s many valleys and create poor solutions that become stepping-stones for better ones.

  These mechanisms are at work from molecules to humans, and landscape thinking can help explain why phenomena as different as strong genetic drift and lenient bankruptcy laws serve similar roles in the creative process. Not only that, but landscape thinking also can help enhance human creativity, and it can do so for individuals and entire nations alike.

  The key is balance. Harsh selection must be balanced with tolerance of failure, rigor with playfulness, convergent with divergent thinking, authority with autonomy, mindfulness with mind-wandering, educational depth with breadth, small steps with giant leaps. Compared to Darwinism 1.0, that insight is already revolutionary.

  Unfortunately, we still know little about where this balance lies. This is even true for the creativity we can observe and control best, like that of bacteria evolving in my Zurich laboratory. For example, we do not know the right balance between the small steps of DNA mutations and the long leaps of DNA recombination that will teach a bacterium to survive a toxic molecule or a viral parasite. The genetic algorithms of computer scientists, which simulate evolving populations with tunable amounts of mutation and recombination, tell us that there may not even be a general answer. The right balance may depend on the problem to be solved.

  Finding that balance for human creativity is a job for future generations, but in a world tilted far toward competition, some prescriptions are easy. Creativity-enhancing programs will move the scale in the right direction for children in a hypercompetitive school system. More-lenient bankruptcy laws will do the same for business innovation in countries that purge failed entrepreneurs, and migration will do the same in the least diverse societies. After more than a century of a simpleminded Darwinism, it will take a long time before the scales tilt too far the other way.

  Landscape thinking also harbors some painful truths. The most obvious one is that failure is unavoidable. Biological evolution is blind, and so are we. In other words, creativity will always be inefficient. Biological evolution is inefficient because it eliminates the vast majority of new mutants. Fundamental research is inefficient because it must plant numerous seedlings to harvest a few luscious fruits. Business innovation is inefficient because it is littered with failed start-up companies. The inevitability of failure holds a lesson for those politicians who aim to eliminate all wasteful research: their efforts will achieve little more than to destroy a society’s creative potential.

  Sadly, inevitable failures also mean that there are no reassurances for the parents among us who worry that our children will take a dead-end path on their creative journeys. That’s another reason why second chances are so important. To the extent that we can learn to tolerate failure, not just in playing children, but also in the more momentous experiments of scientists, strategies of companies, and policies of nations, we will approach our full potential to create a world of our choosing. The thirteenth-century theologian Thomas Aquinas was onto something when he wrote that God created the world in play.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank the members of my research team at the University of Zurich for the many scientific discussions that have shaped my thinking about adaptive landscapes over the years. I am also grateful for the continued support of the Santa Fe Institute. Countless conversations with my collaborators at the Institute, as well as with resident and visiting scientists over the years, greatly helped expand my horizons beyond the realm of biology and into the social sciences, engineering, and the arts. This book would have been impossible without these conversations. Jeff Alexander provided much appreciated early structural advice on the manuscript. Thanks also go to T.J. Kelleher and Melissa Veronesi for their incisive editorial work. David Young Kim provided useful source material on artistic journeys. Lukas Keller, Melanie Mitchell, Carel van Schaik, and Dean Simonton provided feedback on parts or all of the manuscript. I have followed most but not all of their suggestions, and the book may be worse for it where I did not. My agent, Lisa Adams, has been unfailingly professional and patient in addressing many not just contractual but also strategic and editorial questions. Last, but not least, I would also like to thank the editorial team at Basic Books for birthing the final product.

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  Andreas Wagner is a professor and chairman in the Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of Zurich and an external professor at the Sante Fe Institute. He is also the author of four books on evolutionary innovation. He lives in Zurich, Switzerland.

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