Barricelli played God, on a very small scale. He could dictate the laws of nature, but miracles were out of bounds. The aim, as he explained it in 1953, was “to keep one or more species alive for a large number of generations under conditions producing hereditary changes and evolution in the species. But we must avoid producing such conditions by changing the character of the experiment after the experiment has started.” His guidelines are reminiscent of Leibniz’s belief in a universe optimized to become as interesting as possible under a minimum of constraints.
