Mormon Metaphysics & Theology

Digital Darwins
February 15, 2005

There's a nice little story at Discovery Magazine on doing evolution with computers. The idea of evolving computer programs is an old one. I remember back in the 80's while in High School Scientific American having articles on this. (They used to have all sorts of interesting mathematical and computer recreations that you could attempt) I remember one program I wrote that did this. Evolving programs, part of the whole AI movement in the early 90's, never really caught on except in a few niches. But the fact is that the basic idea is useful. Now, as explaining biological evolution it obviously won't answer the dedicated Creationist or even IDer. However you can create models that demonstrate a lot of growth and surprisingly do answer a lot of issues in traditional biological evolution. (Such as rapid periods of evolution)

The article mentions a few, such as the "infamous" complaints about complexity. (Ideas such as how the eye could evolve since "half an eye" isn't useful) This also is one of the main arguments by Intelligent Design proponents. The fact is that intermediary steps that parallel macro-evolution in real biological creatures pop up in these computer models. What's most interesting is that you can download the software and run it yourself.


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