Is It All a Fluke? Lessons From Playing God in the Long-Term Evolution Experiment
Brian Klaas’s new book, Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters, is about the invisible influence of small moments. In this excerpt, Klaas takes us into one of the longest-running experiments in history, where researchers play out the lives of twelve identical strains of E. coli across tens of thousands of generations to investigate how much or little life can diverge from a single starting place. Klaas explains how a series of small, genetic flukes can drastically change the trajectory of these tiny microbial universes—prompting us to reconsider how we think about our own history and the weight we place on circumstance. — Antonia Violante, Books Editor
Our understanding of human history is a battle between contingency and convergence. Do stable, long-term trends drive change? Or does history pivot on the tiniest details? We’re left to speculate between the two worldviews because we can’t experimentally test the past.
But what if you could create multiple worlds? And what if, within them, you could not just control what happens inside but also control time? Imagine the ability to play God, pressing pause at will, even rewinding and replaying key moments. That would give us a glimpse of the inner mysteries of cause and effect with unprecedented precision. We would finally know how change happens—and whether contingency or convergence reigns supreme. It’s an intoxicating thought experiment. But could it happen?
