Is There a Universal Logic for Living Systems

Abstract: It has been argued that the historical nature of evolution makes it a highly path-dependent process. Under this view, the outcome of evolutionary dynamics could result in organisms with different forms and functions. At the same time, there is ample evidence that convergence and constraints strongly limit the domain of the potential design principles that evolution can achieve. Are these limitations relevant in shaping the fabric of the possible? Here, we argue that fundamental constraints are associated with the logic of living matter. We illustrate this idea by considering the thermodynamic properties of living systems, the linear nature of molecular information, the cellular nature of the building blocks of life, the limits to multicellular complexity, the threshold nature of computations in cognitive systems, and the discrete nature of the architecture of ecosystems. In all these examples, we present available evidence and suggest potential avenues towards a well-defined theoretical formulation. One implication of this proposal is that life elsewhere should share profound commonalities with the life we know from our biosphere, and potential synthetic living designs might also be deeply constrained by the same universal principles.