Evolutionary biologists have tended to view each of these transitions as a contingent event. But within the functional-information framework, it seems possible that such jumps in evolutionary processes (whether biological or not) are inevitable.

In these jumps, Wong pictures the evolving objects as accessing an entirely new landscape of possibilities and ways to become organized, as if penetrating to the “next floor up.” Crucially, what matters — the criteria for selection, on which continued evolution depends — also changes, plotting a wholly novel course. On the next floor up, possibilities await that could not have been guessed before you reached