# Falling into Place Entropy, Galileo's Frames of Reference, and the Desperate Ingenuity of Life by John Tooby > “The hardest choice I had to make in my early scientific life was whether to give up the beautiful puzzles of quantum mechanics, nonlocality, and cosmology for something equally arresting: To work instead on reverse engineering the code that natural selection had built into the programs that made up our species' circuit architecture. In 1970, the surrounding cultural frenzy and geopolitics made first steps toward a nonideological and computational understanding of our evolved design, "human nature", seem urgent; the recent rise of computer science and cybernetics made it seem possible; the almost complete avoidance of and hostility to evolutionary biology by behavioral and social scientists had nearly neutered those fields, and so made it seem necessary.” > **— John Tooby**, *2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation?”* ## Sources and Context - **Direct Edge response and surrounding essay:** [Falling Into Place: Entropy, Galileo's Frames of Reference, and the Desperate Ingenuity Of Life](https://www.edge.org/responses/what-is-your-favorite-deep-elegant-or-beautiful-explanation) — Edge published this exact passage in its 2012 Annual Question collection, *WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE DEEP, ELEGANT, OR BEAUTIFUL EXPLANATION?*. The response page preserves the surrounding argument and qualifications. - **Complete local collection index:** [[research/Edge 2012 Full Quotation Curation|Edge 2012 Full Quotation Curation]] — retained source-first record for the complete response cohort and this passage's promotion status. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - **Article:** [[articles/The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley|Valley Roots]] - **Article:** [[articles/Modern Artificial Intelligence in the 1970s|AI in the 1970s]] - **Article:** [[articles/Cyber-Physical Lessons from Imperial Beekeeping|Cyber-Physical Beekeeping]] - **Article:** [[articles/STEVE|STEVE]] - **Wiki map:** [[wiki/Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Cybernetics|Cybernetics]] - [[wiki/Second-Order Cybernetics|Second-Order Cybernetics]] - [[wiki/Cybernetic Feedback Loop|Cybernetic Feedback Loop]] - [[wiki/Unit of Selection|Unit of Selection]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “The hardest choice I had to make in my early scientific life was whether to give up the beautiful puzzles of quantum mechanics, nonlocality, and cosmology for something equally arresting: To work instead on reverse engineering the code that natural selection had built into the programs that made up our species' circuit architecture. In 1970, the surrounding cultural frenzy and geopolitics made first steps toward a nonideological and computational understanding of our evolved design, "human nature", seem urgent; the recent rise of computer science and cybernetics made it seem possible; the almost complete avoidance of and hostility to evolutionary biology by behavioral and social scientists had nearly neutered those fields, and so made it seem necessary.” — John Tooby, 2012, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant, Or Beautiful Explanation?” https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-john-tooby-falling-place-entropy-galileo-s ```