Stephen Wolfram’s notion of computational irreducibility holds that for certain systems, the future cannot be known more quickly than by allowing the system itself to evolve. No calculation, summary, or external shortcut can outrun the process it seeks to predict. To know what the system will do, one must follow it, step by step, through the same duration and effort as its own unfolding.
Equally disruptive is the implication that complexity need not arise from complex causes. Systems governed by extremely simple rules can, over time, generate behavior of immense intricacy. Complexity, in this sense, is not evidence of design or accumulation, but the consequence of persistence.
Taken together, these insights have long-ranging implications for how evolution is understood—not only in living systems, but in all forms of matter.