The Petri dish as a whole weighs the same before and after. Simple rules can have complex consequences. This simple rule has such a wealth of implications that it is worth examining in detail. It is the far from self-evident guiding principle of reductionism and of most modern investigations into cosmic complexity. Reductionism will not be truly successful until physicists and cosmologists demonstrate that the large-scale phenomena of the world arise from fundamental physics alone.
Life is forward-deterministic .
Endless Growth Conway wondered about the possibility of patterns that grow without limit. Suppose there is some pattern that grows forever. It needn't even be a natural pattern. If they existed, unlimited growth patterns could change the history of the Life plane. At the very least, they would grow to fill up the empty space available to them.