In the most basic respect, any system complicated enough to allow freedom of motion (not free will, later, just free movement of energy), there will be an inevitable precipitation of patterns we have come to see as 'laws of (this) Universe'. Bearing in mind that in a large enough system, it is likely for patterns to develop which will repeat themselves, especially if that universe has rules to encourage them, those patterns may come to be called by the manifold's inhabitants as 'trends'
The 'trend' of life in our universe is likely a mathematically inevitable resistance to entropy by matter within it. In a system 'designed' to leak energy, anything which 'develops' to resist that flow away from 'itself' could be called 'alive', 'intelligent', or 'sucessfully darwinian'.
We don't know ourselves, so much as we have the trait to think that we do, and that makes it easier for us to drift along, resisting entropy in a sufficiently large universe to amaze me.
