🚀 go-pugleaf

In talk.origins, on thread _evolution?(please read)_,
e904952p@hjc.edu.sg wrote:

>I am a high school student doing a project on non-linear dynamic systems
>and chaos theory. In studying complex (and often non-linear) systems, I
>couldn�t help but being fascinated by the existence of living organisms. I
>am yet to finish my high school and I guess I don't know much. However it
>seems pretty much a miracle to me that life simply came into existence all
>of a sudden-----and so quickly after earth became comfortable enough for
>living things to develop. 

This is true for sufficiently large values of "sudden" and "quickly".
I tend to think that tens or hundreds of millions of years are a
rather lengthy period.

>Even more astonishing is that life has a
>tendency to evolve in the direction towards greater complexity.

Imagine a random walk on a complexity plane. You can't get less
complex than nothing, but you can get more complex. So, over time,
more complexity will appear.

> Here the
>theory of evolution fails complete, at least to me. In terms of ability
>to reproduce and surviving in harsh conditions we human loses helplessly
>to some simple single-cell organisms.

And yet we are still here. Which suggests that you should reconsider
what you mean by survive.

> Yet the very fact that you are
>reading this article suggests that there're built-in forces of nature
>that lead inevitably to the formation of systems of higher organisation
>and greater complexity.  So far I know of no theory that explains
>satisfactorily this phenomena. 

Read up on evolution. There is much in it that would answer these
questions.

>And it's my hope that someone in this
>newsgroup would give me some convincing explanations. 

Where have you been getting your explanations from until now?

>Consider how eyes
>could have formed. Eyes definitely put some organisms at an advantage over
>others. But I suppose half an eye would not help much at that, what's
>more, it would be a sheer burden. 

Would this, perchance, come from a creationist tract? I ask because
this is a familiar question. The eye is a relatively easy organ it
imagine evolving. A spot on a cell that is light sensitive will help
that organism survive. Several cells can help more. A depression to
protect these cells helps, as does a membrane. As does a focusable
membrane. Each step of the way from no eye to the octopus eye is
functional and can provide reproductive advantage. And, interestingly
enough, we have examples of each of these stages in existent
organisms.

>But the idea that it so happened all of
>a sudden living organisms acquired fully functional eyes by some
>accident was too much for me. 

Too much for me as well. Which is why I accept evolution rather than
creationism.

>Since far-from-equilibrium systems has a
>tendency to go through bifurcations and 'jump' to some other (stable)
>states, and living organisms are all open systems that are far from
>equilibrium, I somehow feel that they are related. I am tempted to
>construct some computational model to simulate living organisms, but I
>couldn't think of how to start. 

Read _Artificial Life_ by Stuart Kaufman. It discusses these issues
and has some very good references.

>Right now I'm still doing Lorenz attractor
>and logistic equations and Henon maps.
>I'd like very much  that someone help me along the way.
>Please contact me through email at: e904952p@hjc.edu.sg
>Thank you.
>And please excuse me of my broken English, it's not my native language and
>it's taken me two years to get this far as be able to express myself.

Broken english? Sorry, but I did not see any.

[posted and emailed by request]



Matt Silberstein
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CAUCHON. And you, and not the Church, are to be the judge?

JOAN. What other judgment can I judge by but my own?

_Saint Joan_ by GBS, Scene VI