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November 06, 2005
The Blind Watchmaker
The Blind Watchmaker is another book by Richard Dawkins. In The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins looks at how good a job Darwininan theory does at explaining life on earth as compared with alternative explanations.
One of the things he did on his early 80s Macintosh was create a little program to generate when he called "biomorphs" and through a sort of not-so-natural selection whereby the user chooses a favorite at each alternative step. (Click here for Frits Beukers's Java applet version.) The biomorphs start as a single segment that grows by branching symetrically, with the branching governed by formula that can mutate a little for each generational branch. Dawkins originally expected to grow trees this way, but it turns out that all manner of stuff evolves. The critter on this blog entry is an example.
Dawkins gives fine arguments of how eyes, echolocation, and even DNA can evolve according to natural selection, and how it makes more sense statistically speaking to explain what we observe by natural selection than by any alternative he mentions, creationism being the most well-known, though a range of other alternatives have been taken more or less seriously from time to time.
Theories that hold up as well as natural selection, yet explain quite a bit, seem rare. If we define theory narrowly as, "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world," few -- quantum field theory, relativity, maybe plate techtonics -- come to mind that look as defensible.
Looking at this the other way around, an enormous amount of our beliefs arises from something other than very defensible theory. Of course some beliefs come from logical extensions of other beliefs. That's how we got to the fundamental theorem of calculus. That's also how we can follow a flying bird as it goes behind the house and then reappears on the other side. But I guess that most of our thinking falls in between understanding Leibniz and following basic motion. And most of that thinking is on shaky ground.
One aspect I liked of The Blind Watchmaker is shared by The Selfish Gene. Both books give a sense that even today's certainties are probably soon going to be a silly as yesterday's now seem. I'm hoping we can look back and laugh, rather than groan.
Posted by Mark at November 6, 2005 05:21 PM
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