This confluence of physics and evolution has not been obvious. In 1987, William Bartley described a conference in which the physicist John Wheeler presented his take on quantum theory. Sir Karl Popper, a famous philosopher of science, “turned to him and quietly said: ‘What you say is contradicted by biology.’ It was a dramatic moment. . . . And then the biologists . . . broke into delighted applause. It was as if someone had finally said what they had been thinking.”
