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ANNOTATION:
Determinism and predictability according to Dawkins
We shouldn't say that the direction of evolution is so random. See the classic examples of Richard Dawkins, obtained for example by means of a computer program to simulate some biological evolution . For easier-to-modelate biological systems, such as the eye or shells, he started with the most simple models he could, and by evaluating fitnesses, he came up only with eyes and shells that actually exist in a kinda small number of iterations!! (Determinism)..
If you can have infinitely many events, the probability of any of them happening is zero, you should consider an interval of events to be able to assign it a non-null probability. So, near-the-best events must be considered in order to sum up a non-null probability for the best event. Being so, it's expected that by evolution, these near-the-best events converge to a best event sometime.
Author: CHerger Thomann (cherger[at]townsqr.com)
Date: Dec 20, 2000REPLY:
Whoever said evolutiont was random wasn't taking into consideration that organisms have the goal of survival. This naturally limits the number of events way below infinity. An infinite number of events is not a possibility in the real world anyway, so shouldn't even enter the discussion.
As for using programs to simulate something so nebulous as biological evolution, I don't think we're there yet. Mr.Dawkins undoubtedly entered his code with preconceived ideas. Was his simplest eye a single cell? And what were his parameters for "fit"? There are thousands of successful eyes in our biota. I'm a design analyst by profession and an entomologist most of my life and I already see many problems without even looking at his code.
Many, many ways to see. His determinism was ''his'' determinism.
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