At 05:21 PM 09/10/2000, you wrote:
>More and more papers are showing that evolutionary mechanisms can explain the
>evolution of biological complexity.
>
>I ran across this one on talk.origins
>
>http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/9/4463
>
> Abstract
>
>
>To make a case for or against a trend in the evolution of complexity in
>biological evolution, complexity needs to be both rigorously defined and
>measurable. A recent information-theoretic (but intuitively evident)
>definition identifies genomic complexity with the amount of information a
>sequence stores about its environment. We investigate the evolution of
>genomic complexity in populations of digital organisms and monitor in
>detail the evolutionary transitions that increase complexity. We show
>that, because natural selection forces genomes to behave as a natural
>"Maxwell Demon," within a fixed environment, genomic complexity is forced
>to increase.
Chris
I haven't read the paper yet, but I will. Thanks for the URL.
Once one thinks of it, the conclusion of the abstract seems obvious. ID-ers
claim that Darwinists are effectively claiming that there is a "Maxwell
Demon." They are right, in a sense. Of course, energy (or the computer
equivalent) is used up (locally) in the process, so it's not a strict
version of the demon. But, like the Hilsch vortex tube (which separates hot
and cold streams out of a neutral "luke" stream of air), it is still of
interest, even though no laws of physics are violated.
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