A beautiful thing about Evolution by Natural Selection is that the principle itself is metaphysical, not physical. It exists in the same realm as math or logic. The principle is embodied in biology just like the concept of a square can be embodied as a planet. Even if we didn't have any physical squares our metaphysical ideas about metaphysical squares would still valid, hence n-dimensional geometry.
Another cool thing about Evolution by Natural Selection is that it is nicely self contained. It's the bottom of a finite rabbit hole. Understanding what evolution is made of will help us understand a particular instance of evolution, but not the principle. So, knowing about DNA and genetic mutations helps us understand evolution in biology but it doesn't tell us more about evolution in abstract. IE, it doesn't get us to a more fundamental understanding. Even if Darwin had been wrong about the origin of species he would still have discovered something awesome.
Newtons principles have a different kind of elegance. They are extremely fundamental and a pleasingly small number of them are needed. The difference is that they are very much physical laws. They are fundamental enough to be treated as fundamental rules of the universe. Almost. Newtonic physics still leaves open the idea of more fundamental questions and answers. Learning what gravity is made of does get us closer to the fundamental.
Darwin's evolution is fundamental in the way that math is. Newton's mechanics is fundamental in the way that atoms are. The way I have these defined in my own mind is Philosophical and Scientific. It's a sort of fuzzy distinction and it breaks down a lot. But it seems useful to me sometimes. "Anthropic," for example, is something you need to get your philosophical mind familiar with.
Back to AI. The single algorithm idea hints, I think a "philosophical" explanation. We're looking for some metaphysical property of the universe that intelligence is an instance of.