My second editorial column is up at Consilience.
When it comes to creating new systems, ideas, things, and experiences on planet Earth, there are two ways of making things happen. The first is blind evolution: Start with some variation, add a mechanism for selecting the fitter variants, and watch what happens. And then there is conscious design: A designer, who is typically human and therefore herself a product of evolution, purposefully produces something new, and if she is fortunate or skilled, something also predictable, efficient, and easily controlled.
These two ways of producing complex systems are profoundly different. It is not surprising, then, that various disciplines, like those of technology versus those of biology, are divided by their concentrations, respectively, in design and evolution. But in reality, everything that humans are and everything humans care about are results of both kinds of processes. Design and evolution interact to create the space we live in, regardless of whether that space is bleak or bountiful. The demand for sustainability is a demand for a generous integration of design and evolution which serves, above all else, the needs of the human body and the human mind.
Read further.