up:: [[Evolution]] The concept of [[The Adjacent Possible]] was first introduced by [[@Stuart Kauffman]] in his [[1996]] work "Investigations: The nature of autonomous agents and the worlds they mutually create (an SFI working paper (96-08-072), published by the Santa Fe Institute). It's a concept that explains [[Evolution]] in terms of exploration and actualisation of what is adjacent and possible; what is available at hand. > [!NOTE] The Adjacent Possible Def. > The set of possibilities available to individuals, communities, institutions, organisms, productive processes, etc., at a given point in time during their evolution (Loreto 2015, p. 9) > > The set of things--could be molecules, organisms, technological products, ideas etc.--that are one step away from what exists and that could be reached by the incremental recombination of the existing elements (Gravino et al. 2019, p. 2) > [!important] > The adjacent possible emerges, and is dynamically reconfigured when explored. When possibilities are explored, new possibilities emerge. However, not all things are adjacent and possible at all times. There are limits to what is adjacent. It depends on the [[Affordances|affordances]] of the specific context. New possibilities come with "an entourage of surrounding possibilities, a cloud of other potential new ideas or experiences that are thematically adjacent to it and hence can be triggered by it" (Tria et al. 2014, p. 1). According to [[@Stuart Kauffman]] ([[2017]]) "diversity begets more diversity". Another way to think about this is that, as living systems develop, they become increasingly complex. [[The TAP Equation]] expresses this mathematically, and demonstrates why both the rate of change and the, complexity of systems, accelerates over time. It's not possible to predict the evolution of all adjacent possibilities. Evolution "flows into a typically unpredictable succession of adjacent possibles". You can't know what will happen or what could happen. They're unknown unknowns. ###### Sources [[Adjacent Possible by Lennart Björneborn]] ###### Related: left:: [[Structural Coupling]], [[Affordances]], [[Innovation]], [[Creativity]], [[Exaptation]] down:: [[Counterfactuals]], [[The TAP Equation]], [[Path Dependence]], [[Serendipity]], [[Possibility Spaces]]