Comes to us via TCS, where Frederick Turner advances the idea of "Divine Evolution":
We now know that nonlinear dynamical systems -- essentially, systems whose elements all cause and control each other's actions, and in which a single line of cause and effect is impossible to untangle -- have "strange attractors". Strange attractors are graphically demonstrable forms that govern the evolution of the dynamical system, but do it in a way that is not predictable. Some attractors, like the Lorenz attractor, govern lots of very different dynamical systems, from dripping faucets to the rotation of star clusters. Living organisms are highly complex dynamical systems, combining in their operation many hierarchical levels of different attractors, with a grand super-attractor that is unique to each species. That attractor can be seen at work in embryonic and fetal development and maturation, where the proteins specified by the genes self-assemble into the adult organism. A much swifter form of self-assembly, but of the same kind, takes place in the brain when the nonlinear dynamical system of the neurons, connected by continually-adjusting synaptic gates, comes up with an idea or a memory.
The self-assembly is not constrained to take a single path, but can take many branching alternatives while still being constrained by a general goal. Such systems are the home of the butterfly effect, where measurably the same situation can give rise to many different paths of development. Strange attractors, when graphically represented, are invariably beautiful to the human eye, with their fractal depth and inexhaustible variation upon a theme. Many have seen pictures of the whorls and paisleys of the Mandelbrot Set. Such attractors are impossible to ever fully plot out, and so are infinite in their own way.
In a sense the attractors preexist the dynamical systems they govern. Even before there were globular star-clusters and dripping faucets, the fractal form of the star orbits and drip-sequences was already inherent in nature. Even before there were plesiosaurs and dolphins and seals and penguins, the strange attractors of airbreathing marine fauna were already inherent in nature. Even before we thought these thoughts, the incredibly complex and unique dance of neuronal firings and chemical reactions that embody them was already waiting in nature's wings. If we insist, as the physicists do, that our universe began with certain fundamental constants -- the speed of light, Planck's constant, etc -- it must also have begun with the whole suite of strange attractors of species and even thoughts, past, present and future.
This conception might be called natural providence, and it has some appealing features from a theological point of view. Whereas classical linear cause and effect "pushes" events into happening, enforces them, attractors "pull" or invite them to happen; what happens next is only one of a number of possible outcomes for the system at that moment -- in effect, choice is built into the physical world. This view of things suggests that if there are divine intentions working themselves out, they are incarnate within nature itself. It brings the will of God into the most intimate recesses of our bodies. And yet it does not constrain belief in God -- a hugely important criterion in the Bible, at least, since we must be free to choose to believe. For we can always dismiss the whole process as merely a natural phenomenon.