by Richard Dawkins
The book that describes the biomorphs. It is much more than that, it aims to explain how a complex world can arise from blind chance and natural selection with no need for an 'Intelligent Designer'. I think that this is an excellent book, whether or not you believe in evolution it explains concepts that are key in several areas. A prime example is complexity and how it can arise from simplicity in small steps. The relationship with probability is explored too -together with some estimates of how likely some out comes, ssuch as life in the universe, are.
Dawkins is a good writer with a clear style who uses good examples to illustrate his points. From bats, to crocodiles; from ants to eyes; he takes examples from across the natural world. Consider the eye, one of the claims of intelligent design is that something as complex as an eye couldn't have arisen from natural selection and an 'incomplete' eye is no good. This is patent rubbish, at some point in evolutionary history there were no eyes and then the ability to tell light from dark evolved -that's a useful thing to have, if you're a worm you don't really need any more than that. In addition there are eyes at different stages of completeness within nature -the nautilus has an eye like ours, but with no lens; our eye is wired up backwards - that of the octopus is wired forwards; the point is that you don't need a perfect eye, just one that is good enough and better than your competitors.
Which reminds me of the joke about the wildlife film makers who are watching a cheetah when it spots them and puts the team at the head of the menu. As it charges towards them , the sound recordist starts swapping his boots for trainers, when the camera man points out that he still won't be able to out run a cheetah simply because he's wearing Reeboks. 'Mate' replies the recordist, 'I don't have to run fatster than the cheetah -I just have to run faster than you'.
There is lots of other good stuff in here, genetic algorithms, cooperating genes, discussions around Lamarkism and Punctured Equilibrium, genetic explosions and spirals, the tail of the peacock and convergent evolution. All in all very highly recommended.
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Tuesday, 15 February 2011
Sunday, 23 January 2011
Biomorphs - software genetics in HTML5 and Javascript.
'Pull the switch Igor -we're frying tonight!' Today we're going to create artificial life MWHAHAHA! Well not really, but we are going to have a play with genetics and software development, less fun than lightning and a methane atmosphere -but quicker and easier to arrange than a suitable planet.
Richard Dawkins describes biomorphs in his book The Blind Watchmaker (chapter 3). Biomorphs are shapes that change by mutation and it is possible to build up creatures by selecting from the generated shapes. Pretty much a game really, although the book does carry a good description of n-dimensional spaces (9 in this instance) -maybe I finally get it.
As an exercise in brushing up my Javascript -and playing with HTML5 I am going to have a go at creating a version of his concept. The reason for Javascript and HTML5 is that I can host a page with the program on this blog and not have to set up a server somewhere.
In Dawkins original a biomorph is a tree structure that has 9 genes controlling its growth, these genes control things like stem length, branch angle, number of iterations of breeding &c.. There isn't an algorithm as such in the book so this will be an 'Agile' (or suck it and see) development and I'll basically solve small problems and hope that I can bolt them all together for an overall solution.
Finally, as Biomorphs are tree structures the natural algorithm to draw them will be recursive, it'll be interesting to see if Javascript and the browsers can handle that.
The program will appear on a separate page available from the top menu, our first design decision!
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| Example Biomorphs |
Richard Dawkins describes biomorphs in his book The Blind Watchmaker (chapter 3). Biomorphs are shapes that change by mutation and it is possible to build up creatures by selecting from the generated shapes. Pretty much a game really, although the book does carry a good description of n-dimensional spaces (9 in this instance) -maybe I finally get it.
As an exercise in brushing up my Javascript -and playing with HTML5 I am going to have a go at creating a version of his concept. The reason for Javascript and HTML5 is that I can host a page with the program on this blog and not have to set up a server somewhere.
In Dawkins original a biomorph is a tree structure that has 9 genes controlling its growth, these genes control things like stem length, branch angle, number of iterations of breeding &c.. There isn't an algorithm as such in the book so this will be an 'Agile' (or suck it and see) development and I'll basically solve small problems and hope that I can bolt them all together for an overall solution.
Finally, as Biomorphs are tree structures the natural algorithm to draw them will be recursive, it'll be interesting to see if Javascript and the browsers can handle that.
The program will appear on a separate page available from the top menu, our first design decision!
Tuesday, 4 January 2011
The Fabric of Reality
by David Deutsch
This is a frustrating book, I feel that there is some good stuff in there, but that the arguments aren’t that well made.
Deutsch’s theme seems to be that we can construct a theory of everything from four current scientific theories; the Turing Principle of a universal computer, the multiverse version of quantum physics, Karl Popper’s view of knowledge and Dawkin’s update of Darwininan evolution, and the greatest of these is quantum theory. The argument is that all these theories can be related, and that as quantum theory is the most basic -in terms of physics and mathematical description- then it is the most important. The other three theories are emergent, that is they can’t be connected directly, mathematically, to the base theory, in the way that say large parts of chemistry can be, yet they still provide good working explanations of the universe (multiverse!) as it is.
That word explanation is key to the book, he explains (following Popper) that all scientific theories are explanations of problems that we use until we find a better one. I struggled with the word problem, but if I read it more as a conundrum, or define it as something that needs an explanation it helps. An explanation is deemed to be good if it is the simplest one to fit all the known facts, reference William of Occam. So whilst we can describe planetary motion in terms of angels moving heavenly bodies about the earth so as to appear that the earth rotates about the sun, it’s much simpler just to treat the earth as moving around the sun -which we would have to, angels or no- than to worry about the motives of the angels as well.
It is also central to the book that we should treat explanations as serious and true until we find a problem with them that needs a new explanation. So Newtonian mechanics was believed in, and treated as true and the world advanced using Newton for two or three centuries until problems arose (such as the orbit of Mercury being slightly different to that predicted) that required a new explanation. That explanation was General Relativity. Deutsch argues that this is not the case with his chosen theories, although they are the best explanations that we currently have they are not taken seriously, at least in part because we just don’t like them. Quantum theory is downright weird. You either have to believe in the Copenhagen Interpretation that the world changes because you look at it; or the multiverse theory where new universes are created at every decision point, that damn cat is dead and alive. The Selfish Gene is a cold and amoral theory and doesn’t need a god. Not a worry when you’re talking about rocks and atoms, but this is personal and we have emotional problems dealing with it. The Turing principle is fine -but largely ignored, we’re too busy playing with computers to think much about them and perhaps the same is true of Popper, although it seems pretty similar to the scientific method as I was taught it in school.
So what do I think? It’s not very coherent -perhaps because three of the theories are emergent so we can’t formally tie everything together. There are links there between the theories, obvious ones between Turing and Dawkins, and computers are, in a limited sense, quantum devices anyway. So worth reading, lots to think about, but for me it lacked a defined central argument and some of the logic chopping seemed to get close to the ‘All elephants are grey, the battleship is grey, therefore the battleship is an elephant.’; although I do realise that this is because we are supposed to assume the four theories to be absolutely true and dream up ideas around that assumption, ideas that we can then test.
This is a frustrating book, I feel that there is some good stuff in there, but that the arguments aren’t that well made.
Deutsch’s theme seems to be that we can construct a theory of everything from four current scientific theories; the Turing Principle of a universal computer, the multiverse version of quantum physics, Karl Popper’s view of knowledge and Dawkin’s update of Darwininan evolution, and the greatest of these is quantum theory. The argument is that all these theories can be related, and that as quantum theory is the most basic -in terms of physics and mathematical description- then it is the most important. The other three theories are emergent, that is they can’t be connected directly, mathematically, to the base theory, in the way that say large parts of chemistry can be, yet they still provide good working explanations of the universe (multiverse!) as it is.
That word explanation is key to the book, he explains (following Popper) that all scientific theories are explanations of problems that we use until we find a better one. I struggled with the word problem, but if I read it more as a conundrum, or define it as something that needs an explanation it helps. An explanation is deemed to be good if it is the simplest one to fit all the known facts, reference William of Occam. So whilst we can describe planetary motion in terms of angels moving heavenly bodies about the earth so as to appear that the earth rotates about the sun, it’s much simpler just to treat the earth as moving around the sun -which we would have to, angels or no- than to worry about the motives of the angels as well.
It is also central to the book that we should treat explanations as serious and true until we find a problem with them that needs a new explanation. So Newtonian mechanics was believed in, and treated as true and the world advanced using Newton for two or three centuries until problems arose (such as the orbit of Mercury being slightly different to that predicted) that required a new explanation. That explanation was General Relativity. Deutsch argues that this is not the case with his chosen theories, although they are the best explanations that we currently have they are not taken seriously, at least in part because we just don’t like them. Quantum theory is downright weird. You either have to believe in the Copenhagen Interpretation that the world changes because you look at it; or the multiverse theory where new universes are created at every decision point, that damn cat is dead and alive. The Selfish Gene is a cold and amoral theory and doesn’t need a god. Not a worry when you’re talking about rocks and atoms, but this is personal and we have emotional problems dealing with it. The Turing principle is fine -but largely ignored, we’re too busy playing with computers to think much about them and perhaps the same is true of Popper, although it seems pretty similar to the scientific method as I was taught it in school.
So what do I think? It’s not very coherent -perhaps because three of the theories are emergent so we can’t formally tie everything together. There are links there between the theories, obvious ones between Turing and Dawkins, and computers are, in a limited sense, quantum devices anyway. So worth reading, lots to think about, but for me it lacked a defined central argument and some of the logic chopping seemed to get close to the ‘All elephants are grey, the battleship is grey, therefore the battleship is an elephant.’; although I do realise that this is because we are supposed to assume the four theories to be absolutely true and dream up ideas around that assumption, ideas that we can then test.
Monday, 6 December 2010
The End of Time
Julian Barbour
I read this book after a discussion about ‘Continuous Creation’ at work -not the Fred Hoyle version, but the older one by (Locke or Hume?). This says that there is no cause and effect, god creates each instant anew and all memories are illusions.
Barbour’s position is similar, except that by getting rid of time he also gets rid of god. If I understand it correctly he proposes that all possible arrangements of everything just are, all at once, in a place he calls Platonia. There’s a lot of descriptive (no maths), and interesting physics to justify this, which I think I managed to follow pretty well through special relativity until I got lost in Minkowski space. After that I was like a frog looking at a light from a great distance, the occasional photon would hit providing illumination, but it was a flicker or a flash now and then. Did you know that a frog can see individual photons, nor me.
It’s an interesting idea, formulated partly to get around the problem of specifying an initial state that bedevils mainstream physics. If things never start, or evolve then there is no initial state, just a set of configurations and what looks like time, as we experience it, is just a path through some of these configurations.
I think that the book is well worth reading, I like the concepts, the style and the explanations and it has inspired me to read more -and even to start relearning maths at Khan Academy. I’m not wholly convinced by the central idea, I can’t see how consciousness would exist in Platonia -but then I’m still nostalgically attached to cosmic aether.
More at Julian Barbour’s website : http://www.platonia.com/
I read this book after a discussion about ‘Continuous Creation’ at work -not the Fred Hoyle version, but the older one by (Locke or Hume?). This says that there is no cause and effect, god creates each instant anew and all memories are illusions.
Barbour’s position is similar, except that by getting rid of time he also gets rid of god. If I understand it correctly he proposes that all possible arrangements of everything just are, all at once, in a place he calls Platonia. There’s a lot of descriptive (no maths), and interesting physics to justify this, which I think I managed to follow pretty well through special relativity until I got lost in Minkowski space. After that I was like a frog looking at a light from a great distance, the occasional photon would hit providing illumination, but it was a flicker or a flash now and then. Did you know that a frog can see individual photons, nor me.
It’s an interesting idea, formulated partly to get around the problem of specifying an initial state that bedevils mainstream physics. If things never start, or evolve then there is no initial state, just a set of configurations and what looks like time, as we experience it, is just a path through some of these configurations.
I think that the book is well worth reading, I like the concepts, the style and the explanations and it has inspired me to read more -and even to start relearning maths at Khan Academy. I’m not wholly convinced by the central idea, I can’t see how consciousness would exist in Platonia -but then I’m still nostalgically attached to cosmic aether.
More at Julian Barbour’s website : http://www.platonia.com/
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