Have a Scientific Problem? Steal an Answer From Nature
21st February 2015
Before understanding how we steal from nature, it’s important to know why we would want to. Under some circumstances, evolution through natural selection can lead to optimal solutions to particular engineering problems faced by organisms. What this means is that, given a well-defined problem under a stable set of constraints, a series of minor adjustments acted upon by selective pressure can, over the course of millions of generations, produce something very close to the best possible solution. There is simply no way, given the materials at hand and the constraints of biology and physics, to produce a significantly better performing apparatus for the task. This is what we term “optimality.”
February 21st, 2015 at 23:39
What a pile of… Random chance, time and materials do not result in complex design. “Minor adjustments selected upon over millions of generation…” is a huge glossing over. What closer observation would reveal is that in most cases millions of adjustments would have to happen together in ONE generation for an organism to “adapt” to a given environmental challenge and survive. There are too many instances where the “intermediate form” would not be viable Could be we are knocking off originals from a Master Designer when we seek and copy natural solutions. Much more plausible. What are called nature’s solutions to environmental challenge are expressions of genetic information already in the genome. An organism doesn’t “see” a challenge, write a new piece of genetic software and slip in into the next generation And it go on seamlessly functioning.