[NKS and evolution] - A New Kind of Science: The NKS ForumA New Kind of Science: The NKS Forum
Pages:1
NKS and evolution
(Click here to view the original thread with full colors/images)
Posted by: Dag Sorebo
I was not able to make it to NKS 2006, and therefore felt I should contribute somewhat on the forum.
In his keynote, Stephen Wolfram addresses evolutionary issues:
“ Moving on from physics, let's talk about biology. It's at times made me very nervous, but NKS has gotten involved in a foundational question about biology that's been much in the public eye in the U.S.: just how do biological systems come to be the way they are? Is it all Darwinism and natural selection, or must there be something else? ”
I think Wolfram has sound reasons for his nervousness: History shows that - fallible as we humans are - scientific insights which tend to change our world-view often are met with counter-arguments based on truth-proxies not directly relevant for scientific activity. How can NKS, as an emerging field of scientific inquiry, avoid the pitfall of becoming entangled in fruitless debates with people who represent groups which may have ideological, political or religious axes to grind? Perhaps Darwin’s method might serve as a sign-post?
Darwin brought with him Lyell’s “Principles of geology” and Malthus’s “An Essay on the Principle of Population” on the expedition of “The Beagle”, and when the ship reached the Cape Verde-islands he made an initial observation: Some 30 feet above the sea level, a white stripe was embedded in the rock structure circumvening the bay where the ship lay at anchor. Naturally, Darwin climbed up to inspect, and found sea-shells embedded in the white limestone. Pace Lyell, Darwin conjectured that the white stripe once was sea floor, and that some external force somwhere in geological time had lifted the sea floor above sea level.
On the Galapagos islands, Darwin observed an abundance of species, but relatively few predators. Nevertheless, the population of each species to Darwin’s eye seemed to be keeped in check – without sufficient predator activity. The situation seemed to contradict Malthus’s theory, which stated that populations grow in geometrical ratios, while resources grow in arithmetic ratios. In response, Darwin hypothezised - again pace Lyell - that there had to be a external, natural force at work keeping the populations in check. This hypothetical force Darwin called “Natural Selection”.
As it turned out, Mendel’s laws of heredity and early 20th century genetics tied nicely in with -and perhaps even corroborated - the hypothesis of natural selection as a natural force at work on biological species. But this mutual enforcement of scientific theories does not exclude the possibility that there might be more to evolution that met the human eye in the 20th century. It should, however, be sufficient to study evolution by means of truth-proxies relevant to science in order to find out if our current understanding of evolution is deep enough.
Charles Darwin spent 20 years preparing to publish “On the Origin of Species”, and Stephen Wolfram spent 10 years researching “A New Kind of Science”. I think this goes to show that we humans construct meaning for ourselves, and that Wolfram did an outstanding effort in constructing meaning when he chose to subject visually interesting computer-generated patterns based on simple rules to systematic study. Even if we yet don’t know what exactly is below the appearance of visually interesting and complex interplay between the low-level universe of electronic computing machinery, the intermediate level of logical rule-formulation and the high-level perception of the human eye, NKS continues to prove its fecundity as a tool for adding depth of meaning to existing human knowledge. And as investigators into the unknown, should we not agree with Aristotle’s point that “knowledge is a fine and valuable thing”? Efforts in NKS continue to show instances of cellular automata which may be employed as truth-proxies or modelling tools in science; for instance, from the NKS 2006 conference blog I learned that Rafal Kicinger shows how design can be grown by means of cellular automaton evolution.
I guess a next logical step of the above discussion could be to ask if there might be a natural force at play which cause apparent and visually accessible higher-level complex behaviour emerging from low-level systems ranging from biological genomes through cellular automata to galaxies, and if such a natural force might be described as a simple rule.
If there exists a natural force at play in the evolution of interesting cellular automata, would it then be unreasonable to think that the low-level description of such a force formulated as a rule might be akin to low-level descriptions of other natural laws - like natural selection and/ or gravity? Is there somewhere in the computational universe a cellular automaton equivalent to a “white stripe containing sea shells 30 feet above sea level” which may allow the NKS community and other people who enjoy construct meaning for themselves to hypothezise, conjecture and even dream beyond what we know?
A great conference to all of you – I hope to be with you IRL in future gatherings!
Posted by: h0riz0n
I have never liked the complexity of evolution theory and always thought some basic action was underlying the whole process. CA processes are obviously at hand. Maybe the whole theory should be termed information design. http://wikireason.net/wiki/Talk:Dis...on_Theory#links
Posted by: Garrett Neske
Although programs like cellular automata can model complex systems, such as those in the living environment, this does NOT implicate a designer. I believe that Wolfram very explicitly steers away from this concept of "design." Wolfram's theory of evolution is essentially that there exists a sort of "program space" and that evolution constitutes a search through that space. The programs need not have been created; there are just *there*. Wolfram also does not believe that the convergence toward optimal solutions is the correct way to view evolution. He contends that any search through program space is quite likely to result in a complex phenotype, according with the Principle of Computational Equivalence. Again, there is no aspect of design or optimality in this conception. In fact, this idea seems to directly counter any aspect of design or optimality.
Forum Sponsored by Wolfram Research
© 2004-2008 Wolfram Research, Inc. | Powered by vBulletin 2.3.0 © 2000-2002 Jelsoft Enterprises, Ltd. |
Disclaimer
vB Easy Archive Final - Created by Xenon and modified/released by SkuZZy from the Job Openings