Harrison Owen reflected on these words with experiences:

The essential preconditions are: 1) A relatively safe nutrient environment. 2) High levels of diversity and complexity in terms of the elements to be self-organized. 3) Living at the edge of chaos, in a word nothing will happen if everything is sitting like a lump.4) An inner drive towards improvement, hence if you are an atom it would be useful to get together with another atom to become a molecule. 5) Sparsity of connections.

Happy Birthday, Jerry.