Resumen: Despite the endless efforts of fundamental physics, it is becoming increasingly understood that our most basic scientific theories do not fully determine the existence of complex dynamical systems in nature. The revival of optimization principles can be considered a response to mere bottom-up scientific approaches which posit extremely rare boundary conditions of the universe and ad hoc coarse grainings of degrees of freedom in order to recover the classicality of the observed world. In this paper, after making the case for the insurmountable obstacles confronting basic physical theories and obtaining some hints for a possible way out, we briefly review some of the currently most promising optimization procedures trying to explain the emergence of the classical world and, more specifically, of life and consciousness. We claim that all such procedures aim at and make room for new optimizing principles in which value and teleology are fundamental concepts for understanding the self-constitution of complex dynamical systems