I'm wondering if there's a difference between finding patterns and finding goals or teleology. Stars are created, exist, and die following certain kinds of patterns. Stars fall along the spectrum of the main sequence. And the reason stars have these similarities is due to the nature of physics. There are no "random" star types, technically speaking. But I'm not sure it makes sense to say that stars are directional, unless we just mean that they are part of a causal chain bound by the laws of nature.
It seems like one could say that biology converges on certain types because that's what works. Eyes keep emerging because those that have them reproduce. Arms and legs emerge because those that have them reproduce. Other types of bodies that we could imagine simply don't get off the ground (evolutionarily speaking) in this kind of universe.
It could be true that humanoids are a form that work well (or well enough) in this kind of universe--just like red dwarf stars. But what we are seeing are certain kinds of patterns, not because they are aimed at but because they survive to tell their tale.
The difference is subtle and it is largely a matter of perspective. An decent analogy is the periodic table of elements. The creation of Carbon is "written in the stars", but is it something towards which the universe is directed towards? Belief in teleology is an act of faith and so is belief in randomness (see my article here for more on this https://www.templeton.org/news/the-ineffable-purpose-of-randomness).
Another interesting example is the Fibonacci sequence in plant phyllotaxis. There is no known adaptive value to this pattern, but life employs it all the time, and we find it beautiful. The same Fibonacci sequence is also the foundation of harmony in music.
I don't know just how it works, to "compare the biological code with millions of random variations," but I doubt that we have the computing power to anticipate all the endless forms that evolutionary processes can yield. We are not smarter than evolution.
I'm sure it's standard principle of ethology, that adventitious factors rooted in the pre-biological natural world place constraints on evolution. But those constraints themselves are subject to significant variation. A planet of slightly different size, and hence with slightly different gravity, could produce a significantly different array of body-plans than what we see on Earth. So many variables from the nonliving world can come into play: distance of the planet from the galactic center, type of star the planet orbits and just where in the Goldilocks zone the planet lies, strength of the planet's magnetic field, etc. Certainly it's likely that there exist planets in the cosmos that are even MORE favorable to life than the Earth is. It takes some hubris to assume that we can decree what kinds of life forms are possible, and which are not, merely from our biosphere-sample of one, here.
Super Computers (and AI in particular) have been very helpful in this regard--as long as we assume that there are not a great variety of periodic tables with different elements throughout the universe. I would encourage you to read the published studies/ research by Freeland. (Stephen J. Freeland, Robin D. Knight, Laura F. Landweber, Laurence D. Hurst, “Early Fixation of an Optimal Genetic Code,” Molecular Biology and Evolution, 17:4 (April 2000), 511–518). Freeland started with 2 million different possibilities and then looked at 270 million, and others have continued this line of research--see for example https://doi.org/10.1186/gb-2001-2-11-research0049. Also take a look at the work of Norman Pace, a current leader in microbiome research (Norman R. Pace, “The Universal Nature of Biochemistry,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98 (2001), 805–808). For your latter comment on the probability of planets being more habitable to life I would recommend reading Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe--by Peter Ward, a geologist and evolutionary biologist, and Donald E. Brownlee, a cosmologist and astrobiologist. For the predictability of forms see George McGhee, Convergent Evolution: Limited Forms Most Beautiful (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011). Also take a look at the research of Simon Conway Morris
I'm wondering if there's a difference between finding patterns and finding goals or teleology. Stars are created, exist, and die following certain kinds of patterns. Stars fall along the spectrum of the main sequence. And the reason stars have these similarities is due to the nature of physics. There are no "random" star types, technically speaking. But I'm not sure it makes sense to say that stars are directional, unless we just mean that they are part of a causal chain bound by the laws of nature.
It seems like one could say that biology converges on certain types because that's what works. Eyes keep emerging because those that have them reproduce. Arms and legs emerge because those that have them reproduce. Other types of bodies that we could imagine simply don't get off the ground (evolutionarily speaking) in this kind of universe.
It could be true that humanoids are a form that work well (or well enough) in this kind of universe--just like red dwarf stars. But what we are seeing are certain kinds of patterns, not because they are aimed at but because they survive to tell their tale.
The difference is subtle and it is largely a matter of perspective. An decent analogy is the periodic table of elements. The creation of Carbon is "written in the stars", but is it something towards which the universe is directed towards? Belief in teleology is an act of faith and so is belief in randomness (see my article here for more on this https://www.templeton.org/news/the-ineffable-purpose-of-randomness).
Another interesting example is the Fibonacci sequence in plant phyllotaxis. There is no known adaptive value to this pattern, but life employs it all the time, and we find it beautiful. The same Fibonacci sequence is also the foundation of harmony in music.
I don't know just how it works, to "compare the biological code with millions of random variations," but I doubt that we have the computing power to anticipate all the endless forms that evolutionary processes can yield. We are not smarter than evolution.
I'm sure it's standard principle of ethology, that adventitious factors rooted in the pre-biological natural world place constraints on evolution. But those constraints themselves are subject to significant variation. A planet of slightly different size, and hence with slightly different gravity, could produce a significantly different array of body-plans than what we see on Earth. So many variables from the nonliving world can come into play: distance of the planet from the galactic center, type of star the planet orbits and just where in the Goldilocks zone the planet lies, strength of the planet's magnetic field, etc. Certainly it's likely that there exist planets in the cosmos that are even MORE favorable to life than the Earth is. It takes some hubris to assume that we can decree what kinds of life forms are possible, and which are not, merely from our biosphere-sample of one, here.
Super Computers (and AI in particular) have been very helpful in this regard--as long as we assume that there are not a great variety of periodic tables with different elements throughout the universe. I would encourage you to read the published studies/ research by Freeland. (Stephen J. Freeland, Robin D. Knight, Laura F. Landweber, Laurence D. Hurst, “Early Fixation of an Optimal Genetic Code,” Molecular Biology and Evolution, 17:4 (April 2000), 511–518). Freeland started with 2 million different possibilities and then looked at 270 million, and others have continued this line of research--see for example https://doi.org/10.1186/gb-2001-2-11-research0049. Also take a look at the work of Norman Pace, a current leader in microbiome research (Norman R. Pace, “The Universal Nature of Biochemistry,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98 (2001), 805–808). For your latter comment on the probability of planets being more habitable to life I would recommend reading Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe--by Peter Ward, a geologist and evolutionary biologist, and Donald E. Brownlee, a cosmologist and astrobiologist. For the predictability of forms see George McGhee, Convergent Evolution: Limited Forms Most Beautiful (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011). Also take a look at the research of Simon Conway Morris