All life begins as code - beautifully compressed and then compiled by the laws of physics with just the right amount of stochastic randomness to adapt.
As Wolfram highlights, our world unfolds generatively, each moment a unique brushstroke guided by the last according to fundamental algorithms. Some of these algorithms we know, many we don't. From the spiraling fractals in leaves to the formation of our own neural connectome, we see emergent echoes of procedural generation. Perhaps the line between the organic and the digital will not remain as clear as we once thought.
Great code like life itself can unfold to become more than the sum of its parts. They share profound underlying foundations, rooted in abstraction, generalization, responsiveness and robustness. Just as a generative artist crafts algorithms to spawn intricate visual landscapes from basic elements, a skilled programmer weaves elegant code that unfurls into robust, efficient systems. Both prize minimalism and modularity, recognizing that their respective beauty lies not in brute verbosity, but in the implementation of creativity and fundamental principles.
The canvas of nature leverages randomness and genetic instruction not entirely unlike the programmer's use of functions and loops. The greatest creators, scientists, and programmers I know strike that balance between order and chaos, intuition and rationality, with a certain appreciation for underlying structure and purpose.
Take the neural animation you see here. It's not a video file, It's actually a real generative neural network simulation. It builds itself procedurally with about a dozen lines of Javascript. Don't beleive me? Inspect the source and see for yourself.
"We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes."
- Pierre-Simon Laplace (1815)
The procedural animations here assemble themselves with just a few lines of javascript
for(i=2e3;i--;b=a)a=u[j=i%461]||[960,540],x.fillRect(a[0]+=0|3.1*Math.sin(r=j*1.0472),a[1]+=0|3*Math.cos(r),u[a]?u[j]=[...b]:u[a]=2,2)
"The Book of Nature is written in mathematical language, and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometric figures,”
- Galilio (1609)
What appears to be the complex vascular structure of a biolgical organism is actually a procedural animation that can assemble itself with less than 140 characters of (minified) javascript
for(a=b=t,i=2e4;i--;b+=Math.cos(a*3)/6-a*b/6,a+=r*.8+b*Math.sin(a*3)/1-a/8.7) i&8&&(r=i/b&1), x2.fillRect(a*570-500,b*700+400,.05,0.5);