The adjacent possible is a concept coined by Stuart Kauffman in his book, At Home in the Universe. It refers to how seemingly impossible options can open up whenever we explore the borders of the possible. This idea is beautifully explained by Steven Johnson: > The adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself. Yet it is not an infinite space, or a totally open playing field .... What the adjacent possible tells us is that at any moment the world is capable of extraordinary change, but only certain changes can happen. The strange and beautiful truth about the adjacent possible is that its boundaries grow as you explore those boundaries. Each new combination ushers new combinations into the adjacent possible. Think of it as a house that magically expands with each door you open.^[Johnson, Steven. Where Good Ideas Come from: The Natural History of Innovation, 2010] Stuart Kauffman uses an example from biology and evolution to illustrate his idea of the adjacent possible. All life on earth consists of proteins made from combinations of 20 kinds of amino acids. There are about 10¹²⁰ (or a 1 with 120 zeroes) combinations. This is a really big number. As a comparison, there are about 10⁶⁰ hydrogen molecules in the entire universe. > We might suppose that, through natural selection, nature has tried out this stunning number of combinations, rejecting all but the small subset that have found their way into earthly life — that there is no reason for us to look any farther than our own genomes. Robert Shapiro estimated the number of trials that might have occurred in all the oceans ever dreamed of by Columbus. I think this part of his argument is reasonable. Assuming that a “trial” occurs in a volume of one cubic micron and takes one microsecond, Shapiro calculated that enough time has elapsed since the earth was born to carry out 10⁵¹ trials, or less. If a new protein were tried in each trial, then only 10⁵¹ possible proteins of length 100 can have been tried in the history of the earth. Thus only a tiny portion of the total diversity of such proteins has ever existed on the earth! Life has explored only an infinitesimal fraction of the possible proteins. \ > If such a tiny fraction of the potential diversity of proteins of length 100 have ever felt the sun’s warmth, then there is plenty of room for human explorers to roam. Evolution can have sampled only the tiniest reaches of “protein space.” And since selection tends to stick with the useful forms it finds, evolution’s search has probably been even more restrictive. — Stuart A. Kauffman, “At Home in the Universe” On the one hand, the adjacent possible is a wonderfully optimistic concept, because it suggests that there are many more spaces of possibility left to explore, and that we can work our way towards a radically different / better future by taking small incremental steps, each of which opens up further possibilities. On the other hand, Kauffman himself has identified the Theory of the Adjacent Possible as the main reason why our civilization faces collapse, because our inventions keep multiplying exponentially and outstripping our ability to harness the energy required to pay for their use. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5IgOS7Rg54) In 1969, Esquire invited celebrities to suggest what Neil Armstrong should say when he set foot on the moon. Musician Sun Ra contributed the following poem, which might be describing the adjacent possible: > Reality has touched against myth > Humanity can move to achieve the impossible > Because when you’ve achieved one impossible others > Come together to be with their brother, the first impossible > Borrowed from the rim of the myth > Happy Space Age to you . . . --- **Related**: [[Antipodes of the mind]]