Last week, Michael Wong and Robert Hazen of the Carnegie Institution for Science welcomed a diverse group of nearly 100 scientists, from microbiology to neuroscience, for a workshop on how complexity emerges and evolves. It was also a referendum on their audacious proposal, which, Wong said in a talk, is “an explanatory framework for the evolution of physical systems writ large, including, but not limited to, biology.”

It’s an appealing idea, says Loren Williams, a professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry who studies the origin of life and attended the workshop. “To me it seems very clear that there is evolution outside of biology.” Take the polypeptide backbone, the chain of molecules that forms the spine of all amino acids, he says. “[Biological] evolution doesn’t touch that, right? It’s the same in everything alive. It always has been. But it’s a product of evolution, I’m convinced.” It’s just that the evolution happened before life began, he says. And so when Hazen and his co-authors proposed their overarching theory, he says, “that just resonated with me.”