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Evolution and evolvability  ·  Article

Life-as-it-could-be and the option space of possible organisms

Life as it could be is the study of living systems beyond the one lineage found on Earth. Authors in this corpus describe terrestrial biology as an N = 1 sample carrying frozen accidents, and argue that this sample obscures deep principles of life.7 They propose that synthetic and exobiological work can map a wider option space of possible organisms.8

Earliest held
2019, Levin M
Most discussed in
Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere: An…, 2022
In the library
26 passages in 11 works
Rewritten
2026-10-12
18501875190019251950197520002025Levin M, 20191Levin M, 20192Kriegman S, Blackiston D, Levin M…, 20203Fields C, Levin M, 20224Doctor T, Witkowski O, Solomonova E…, 20225Levin M, 20226Blackiston D, Kriegman S, Bongard J…, 20237Bongard J, Levin M, 20238Gumuskaya G, Davey N, Srivastava P…, 20259
01

The term and its uses

Levin (2019) cites Langton (1995) for the phrase Life as it Could Be. He raises it as a practical problem: deciding which part of a complex biosphere counts as one individual is sometimes obvious on Earth, but may not be for novel life.1 He names a second need, which is communicating with diverse intelligences, evolved or constructed, with whom no language is shared. He suggests behavior shaping by reinforcement as a minimal sign that something has been communicated.1 In the same paper he leaves open whether Scale Free Cognition will help organize knowledge of life and life-as-it-could be, citing Langton and Walker and Davies (2013).2

02

Frozen accidents and invariants

Several papers use the phrase frozen accidents for contingent features of terrestrial evolution. Fields and Levin (2022) aim for theories of intelligence based on cybernetic principles rather than these accidents, and define intelligence as competency in navigating a generalized space.4 Doctor and colleagues (2022) say that basal cognition focuses on the central invariant of intelligence and not on contingent facts of life on Earth.5 Levin (2022) applies the term to existing balances in nature. He argues they come from dynamical properties shaped by frozen accidents and harsh selection, and that rational design offers a chance to do better than evolution allows.6

03

Building new organisms

Kriegman and colleagues (2020) describe designing living systems as orthogonal as possible to existing species yet built from existing cell types, as a model system for exobiology and artificial life among other fields.3 Blackiston and colleagues (2023) argue that exclusive focus on the N = 1 example of Earth life obscures deep principles, and that testing theories outside the data that generated them requires novel living constructs.7 Bongard and Levin (2023) say that synthetic biology and biohybrids blur the line between life and machine, and that the life sciences now have a mandate to understand life as it can be.8 Gumuskaya and colleagues (2025) present Anthrobots, made from adult human cells, as life as it could be because they differ from any known naturally evolved organism.9

SourcesEach quotation was checked word for word against the passage it opens.
  1. This is sometimes obvious in the world of terrestrial biology, but it is an important potential problem to be encountered in research in Life as it Could Be (Langton, 1995).Levin M, 2019 · The Computational Boundary of a "Self": Developmental Bioelectricity Drives… · open at passage 85
  2. Future empirical work will reveal whether Scale Free Cognition is a useful way to organize what we know about the mechanisms and algorithms of life and life-as-it-could be (Langton, 1995; Walker and Davies, 2013).Levin M, 2019 · The Computational Boundary of a "Self": Developmental Bioelectricity Drives… · open at passage 73
  3. designing living systems that are as orthogonal as possible to existing species, yet capable of being built from existing cell types.Kriegman S, Blackiston D, Levin M, Bongard J, 2020 · A scalable pipeline for designing reconfigurable organisms · open at passage 22
  4. Toward the development of mature theories of intelligence based on cybernetic principles and not frozen accidents of the evolutionary stream on Earth, we propose a frameworkFields C, Levin M, 2022 · Competency in Navigating Arbitrary Spaces as an Invariant for Analyzing… · open at passage 4
  5. enables a focus on the central invariant of intelligence, not contingent facts and frozen accidents of the evolutionary journey of life on Earth.Doctor T, Witkowski O, Solomonova E, Duane B, Levin M, 2022 · Biology, Buddhism, and AI: Care as the Driver of Intelligence · open at passage 5
  6. it is the result of dynamical systems properties shaped by the frozen accidents of the meanderings of the evolutionary process and the harsh process of selection for survival capacity.Levin M, 2022 · Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere: An Experimentally-Grounded Framework… · open at passage 123
  7. Exclusive focus on the N = 1 example of life provided by Earth's specific phylogenetic tree, with its baggage of frozen accidents, obscures deep principles of life-as-it-can-be.Blackiston D, Kriegman S, Bongard J, Levin M, 2023 · Biological Robots: Perspectives on an Emerging Interdisciplinary Field · open at passage 38
  8. the life sciences have expanded well beyond the N = 1 example of phylogenetic history here on Earth, to a clear mandate to understand life as it can be via synthetic and exobiological explorationsBongard J, Levin M, 2023 · There's Plenty of Room Right Here: Biological Systems as Evolved, Overloaded… · open at passage 10
  9. they are a unique context in which to understand “life as it could be,” as they differ from any known naturally evolved organism.Gumuskaya G, Davey N, Srivastava P, Bender A, Pio-Lopez L…, 2025 · The Morphological, Behavioral, and Transcriptomic Life Cycle of Anthrobots · open at passage 5
Linked ideas
Designed living constructs are the main experimental route cited for exploring organisms that never existed on Earth.
Basal cognitionrelated to
Frames intelligence as a continuum with an invariant core, apart from the contingent facts of terrestrial evolution.
Describes the design pipeline that Kriegman and colleagues present as a way to build organisms orthogonal to existing species.
Evolvabilityrelated to
Blackiston and colleagues say novel constructs help understand evolvability and plasticity beyond the Earthly data set.
Levin ties the question of what counts as one individual in novel life to identifying a system's boundaries.
Fields and Levin use variational free energy minimization as an invariant meant to hold across diverse embodiments.
Passages repeatedly pair cellular/basal collective intelligence with exobiology and synthetic life: the same continuity framework spans tissues, xenobots, artificial agents and possible alien Selves, widening where mind can be found.
Passage 1 treats physiological homeostasis in single cells as the starting point from which memory, prediction and cognition evolve via bioelectricity; it also names exobiology as an implication, loosely linking to B.
Where it is discussedPassages matching life as it could be, frozen accidents, N = 1 example of life, exobiology
2022Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere: An Experimentally-Grounded Framework… · Levin M6
2019The Computational Boundary of a "Self": Developmental Bioelectricity Drives… · Levin M5
2022Biology, Buddhism, and AI: Care as the Driver of Intelligence · Doctor T, Witkowski O, Solomonova E…3
2023Biological Robots: Perspectives on an Emerging Interdisciplinary Field · Blackiston D, Kriegman S, Bongard J…3
2023Bioelectric networks: the cognitive glue enabling evolutionary scaling from… · Levin M2
2021Behaviorist approaches to investigating memory and learning: A primer for… · Abramson CI, Levin M2
2020A scalable pipeline for designing reconfigurable organisms · Kriegman S, Blackiston D, Levin M…1
2025The Morphological, Behavioral, and Transcriptomic Life Cycle of Anthrobots · Gumuskaya G, Davey N, Srivastava P…1
2022Competency in Navigating Arbitrary Spaces as an Invariant for Analyzing… · Fields C, Levin M1
2023There's Plenty of Room Right Here: Biological Systems as Evolved, Overloaded… · Bongard J, Levin M1