Re: Direction in evolution, from Re: Are there things that don't evolve?

--- David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com> wrote:

> > From: Gregory Arago
> > Sent: Tue 4/4/2006 5:27 PM
> > To: David Opderbeck; Bill Hamilton
> > Cc: Brent Foster; asa@calvin.edu
> > Subject: Re: Direction in evolution, from Re: Are there things that don't
> > evolve?
> >
> >
> > The mousetrap analogy is just that, an analogy. It isn't 'real' science
> > and fails (against the ID case) to distinguish between human-made and
> > non-human-made things. Likewise, only for this reason does Dr. Behe
> continue
> > to re-speak using his Mt. Rushmore example.
> >
> > Mouse traps are 'designed,' 'concocted,' 'engineered,' 'constructed,'
> > 'created,' 'built,' 'fabricated,' 'made' or what have you...by persons.
> > Biological things, however, are not. (Let's leave the bio-tech issue aside
> > for the moment.)
> >
> > Yes, I think Bill is "stretching things by saying this is evolution."
> > There have been 'changes' in animal traps and there are certainly 'trial
> and
> > error' methods employed across the map (even in humanitarian sciences). But
> > calling this example 'evolution,' which continually invokes 'random
> > mutation' (I see little randomness or mutation in trying to catch an animal
> > to eat) or 'natural selection' (this is clearly an example of 'human
> > selection,' if we are not to reduce human beings to merely 'naturalistic
> > determinism') is fallacious. Granted that evolutionary theory is more than
> > it's two most celebrated 'mechanisms' - but please we shouldn't dodge them
> -
> > then at least biological evolution and (computer) engineering evolution
> > should be properly distinguished.
> >
> > This (almost) mantra - "Write a simple program and evolve it" - is quite
> > an astonishing thing to me. People choosing to 'evolve' programs?
> >
> > David Opderbeck wrote:
> > Without getting into a heated debated about the mousetrap analogy -- Bill,
> > I don't think this answers it, since you're assuming an intelligence that
> > arranges the parts of the trap to work a certain way. I don't think the
> > mousetrap analogy is designed to argue that engineered designs never
> > progress through stages of engineering.
> >
> >
> > On 4/3/06, Bill Hamilton wrote:
> > The mousetrap isn't even a good example of something that could not have
> > evolved. Imagine a cave man who comes on an animal which has been killed by
> > a falling tree. After enjoying a good meal, he realizes that he can arrange
> > a log to fall on an animal, so he rigs a log with a vine rope and he stands
> > ready to pull the rope, causing the log to fall on an animal walking under
> > the log. Eventually he (or someone else) realizes he can use bait to cause
> > the animal -- in the process of trying to get the bait -- to trip the dead
> > fall. Fast forward a few thousand years and you get a bunch of derived
> > devices: bear traps, mouse traps, etc. Am I stretching things by saying
> this
> > is evolution? Maybe, but the trap has moved from a primitive dead fall to a
> > spring-loaded modern trap by a number of stages, by trial and error. And
> all
> > the intermediate stages, though they are missing some of the features of
> the
> > modern trap, are functional.
> >
Thanks for your comments, David and Greg. The origin of my "mousetrap
evolution" analogy was an attempt on my part to debunk the mousetrap as an
example of IC. I started thinking of the develoment of the mousetrap and
realized it could be traced back to a primitive dead fall -- which certainly
lacks most of the component parts of the modern mousetrap. Then I thought of
all the stages of development from the dead fall to themodern mousetrap and
thought of the analogy -- and of course it is an analogy -- to evolution. It's
true that intelligent agents devised the stages in development of the trap.
However, there is much trial and error, and many of the agents cannot predict
what will be the next stage (certainly replacing gravity with a spring was a
radical departure). If you tie this in with the language of Genesis 1 and Psalm
19, where God issues commands to nature to "bring forth" various kinds of
creatures, you can imagine a process whereby nature roceeds by trial and error
to devise what God has commanded. God need not proceed by trial and error, but
perhaps his nonomniscient agents do.

The example of evolving a program is an interesting one -- especially if the
evolution is carried out by a genetic algorithm (I believe it was Dave Wallace
who brought up the program evolution example, and I doubt he had genetic
algorithms in mind)

Bill Hamilton
William E. Hamilton, Jr., Ph.D.
248.652.4148 (home) 248.303.8651 (mobile)
"...If God is for us, who is against us?" Rom 8:31

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Received on Thu Apr 6 08:40:50 2006