I'm pretty sure you'll be familiar with this already and it's not really philosophy but check out Von Neumann's work on cellular automata if you haven't already

I'm pretty sure you'll be familiar with this already and it's not really philosophy but check out Von Neumann's work on cellular automata if you haven't already. I think revisiting his work with the computing power we have available now would give valuable insights, it'd let us replay evolution many times over.