TSTOEAO And The Problem Of Complexity: Why “Increasing Functional Information” Should Be Read As Boundary-Conditioned Equilibrium
TSTOEAO And The Problem Of Complexity: Why “Increasing Functional Information” Should Be Read As Boundary-Conditioned Equilibrium DOI: to be assigned J ohn Swygert June 30, 2026 Abstract Recent discussion of the proposed “law of increasing functional information” argues that complexity may increase over time not only in living organisms, but also in nonliving systems such as minerals, elements, planets, stars, and chemical systems. Philip Ball’s Quanta Magazine article, “Why Everything in the Universe Turns More Complex,” presents this proposal as a possible expansion of evolutionary thinking beyond biology and into cosmic history. The article is important because it identifies a real pattern: under certain conditions, systems do not merely decay into disorder, but develop selected, persistent, functional structures over time. Its problem is that the word complexity becomes too large, too vague, and too easily mistaken for the actual mechanism. This paper argues that T...