Christopher Damman, Associate Professor of Gastroenterology, School of Medicine, University of Washington. Editor-in-Chief of Gut Bites MD.

One of the most remarkable features of our universe is that it has become progressively more capable of creating novelty. Somewhere in the earliest moments after the Big Bang, there was no chemistry, no life, no thoughts, no music, no mathematics, and no artificial intelligence. Yet today, the universe contains all of these.

How?

The traditional answer is increasing complexity. Over billions of years, simple things combined into more complicated things. But complexity alone doesn’t fully capture what changed. A snowflake is extraordinarily complex. So is a hurricane. Yet neither can repair itself, reproduce, invent calculus, or build a telescope.

Perhaps the deeper story is not increasing complexity—but increasing causal openness.

A Universe Becoming Increasingly Open

At each major stage of emergence, the universe seems to acquire the ability to participate in more causal relationships. In other words, each new level can both be influenced by more things and influence more things. The universe becomes progressively more connected to itself.

Rather than simply accumulating parts, it expands the number of ways events can shape future events. This is what I mean by causal openness.

Causal openness is the capacity of a system to participate in an expanding network of reciprocal causal interactions.

As causal openness grows, so does the universe’s ability to generate genuinely new possibilities.

Stage 1: Potential

Everything begins with possibility. Potential is not yet matter or energy. It is simply the possibility that distinctions could exist. Its only “action” is differentiation. From possibility emerges the first distinction.

Stage 2: Duality

With two distinguishable states, the universe can now define “this” and “that.” Difference itself has appeared. But distinction alone is static. The next step is relationship.

Stage 3: Relationships

Once distinctions exist, they can become connected. Relationships create patterns, and patterns become organized. From organized relationships emerges something extraordinary: geometry.

Stage 4: Spacetime Geometry

Spacetime is fundamentally relational. Distance, direction, duration, and curvature all describe relationships between events. Geometry constrains what motions are possible, providing the stage upon which quantum fields can exist.

Stage 5: Quantum Fields

Modern physics tells us that the universe is fundamentally composed of quantum fields. These fields oscillate, and localized oscillations become particles. We call those excitations elementary particles.

Stage 6: Elementary Particles

Particles can now interact. Electromagnetic attraction and the nuclear forces allow stable combinations to emerge, making atoms possible.

Stage 7: Atoms

Atoms introduce stability. Stable electron shells allow atoms to combine into molecules through chemical bonds. An entirely new universe of chemistry opens.

Stage 8: Molecules

Molecules do something particles cannot, they catalyze. Chemical reactions begin organizing themselves into networks. Eventually, one class of molecular networks becomes capable of maintaining itself. Life begins.

Stage 9: Cells

Cells are among the first systems capable of actively preserving themselves. They replicate, repair damage, and maintain internal order while continuously exchanging energy and matter with their surroundings. Life dramatically expands the universe’s causal openness. Now genes, nutrients, neighboring cells, temperature, and countless chemical signals all influence future outcomes.

Stage 10: Multicellular Organisms

Cells cooperate. Different tissues specialize, giving rise to entire organisms. These organisms compete, adapt, and evolve. Natural selection becomes another powerful causal influence shaping future possibilities.

Stage 11: Minds

Perhaps the greatest leap occurs when organisms begin constructing internal models of reality. A mind can think about events that are not occurring. It can imagine futures, plan, remember, and learn. The future is no longer determined only by physical forces, it is increasingly influenced by ideas.

Stage 12: Culture

Individual minds begin sharing information. Language allows knowledge to accumulate across generations, and culture becomes a higher-order information system. Ideas now evolve alongside biology, and the number of possible influences on future outcomes grows explosively.

Stage 13: Technology

Culture externalizes itself. Knowledge becomes tools, machines, medicine, and computers. Technology amplifies human causal power beyond biological limits. One invention can influence billions of people simultaneously, expanding the web of reciprocal causation once again.

Stage 14: Computers

Computers process information at scales impossible for individual minds. Artificial intelligence may represent another transition that is still unfolding. For the first time, knowledge systems can increasingly modify themselves. Whether this ultimately represents another genuine emergent level remains to be seen.

A New Way to Think About Emergence

Traditionally, emergence has been viewed as the appearance of increasingly complex structures. But another perspective may be even more illuminating.

Each emergent level increases the number and diversity of influences that shape future outcomes. An elementary particle is influenced by relatively few things. A living cell is influenced by thousands. A human mind is influenced by millions. Culture is influenced by billions. Each new level becomes embedded within an increasingly rich web of reciprocal causal relationships.

This is causal openness.

Importantly, this openness does not arise from fewer constraints—it arises because new constraints create new possibilities. Atoms constrain electrons into stable orbitals, making chemistry possible. Cell membranes constrain molecules, making life possible. Language constrains communication through grammar, making literature, science, and philosophy possible. In each case, organization creates opportunity.

The universe does not become freer by removing structure. It becomes freer by creating richer forms of structure.

The Recursive Universe

One striking feature of this progression is that the same basic pattern repeats again and again. Each level organizes the level beneath it, creates a new form of stability, expands causal openness, and enables an entirely new class of emergent phenomena. The process appears recursive. Simple rules repeatedly generate increasingly powerful forms of organization.

Yet something else also emerges. The universe becomes increasingly reflexive. Life modifies its environment. Minds modify themselves. Culture reshapes minds. Technology reshapes culture. Eventually, the universe develops systems capable of understanding, and intentionally changing, the very processes that produced them. In a profound sense, the universe becomes capable of acting back upon itself.

Beyond Complexity

Whether this framework ultimately proves useful as science remains an open question. But it offers a different lens through which to view cosmic history.

Rather than seeing the story of the universe as one of ever-greater complexity, we might instead see it as one of ever-greater participation. From a single distinction emerged relationships. From relationships emerged geometry. From geometry emerged fields, particles, atoms, chemistry, life, minds, culture, and technology. Each step expanded the universe’s capacity to influence, and be influenced by, itself.

Perhaps that is the deepest pattern of emergence:

The history of the universe is the progressive expansion of reciprocal causal openness, transforming simple distinctions into a cosmos capable of understanding, and ultimately reshaping, itself.