[Mb-civic] And now, digital evolution - Lee Spector - Boston Globe

[William Swiggard]

And now, digital evolution

By Lee Spector  |  August 29, 2005

RECENT developments in computer science provide new perspective on 
''intelligent design," the view that life's complexity could only have 
arisen through the hand of an intelligent designer. These developments 
show that complex and useful designs can indeed emerge from random 
Darwinian processes.

Most scientists agree that the argument for intelligent design, which is 
over 200 years old, was put to rest by Darwin in 1859 and by the 
subsequent triumphs of 20th century biology. Nonetheless, President Bush 
recently advocated teaching intelligent design in schools along with 
evolutionary theory. School boards around the country, most notably in 
Kansas, are staking out similar positions. What can account for the 
persistence of this long-discredited idea?

Scientific illiteracy is certainly part of the explanation, but other 
factors are also at play. Prominent among them is the fact that 
discussions about evolution are usually discussions about the origins of 
the discussants themselves. We tend to hold our own species in high 
regard and to look down on random and mechanical processes. Our 
appreciation for the magnificence of humanity, and of all life, is well 
grounded but it may also blind us in ways that we are not blinded when 
studying rocks or electricity.

Thanks to technology, however, we can now explore evolution without 
discussing ourselves and without even discussing life. We can do this by 
building evolutionary processes into computer programs. When we do this 
we do not find that our appreciation for the magnificence of life is in 
any way diminished. Rather, we find that our appreciation for the power 
of evolution is amplified.

A growing sub-field of computer science is devoted to ''evolutionary 
computation." The user of such a system specifies the ingredients that 
can be used and how the ''goodness" of any particular design can be 
measured. The system then creates and tests thousands or millions of 
random combinations of the ingredients. The better combinations are 
allowed to produce ''children" by mutation (random changes) and 
recombination (random part-swapping). This often produces, after many 
generations, genuinely novel and useful designs and inventions.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/08/29/and_now_digital_evolution/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20050829/7c136162/attachment.htm