🚀 go-pugleaf

Please confine followups to talk.origins.  Thanks.

In article <862304355.15801@dejanews.com>, e904952p@hjc.edu.sg writes:
>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, 

And, apparently, reading "Lost World".

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

Why do you consider this astonishing?  The self replicating systems that we 
call "life" reproduce imperfectly - there are always some changes in the 
offspring systems.  Self replicating systems that change to fall below 
some minimum limit of complexity fail to self replicate.  As far as can 
be determined, there is no upper limit to complexity, so over time more 
complex systems will appear.

Note that this does not mean there is any direction or guidance here - 
an imperfectly self replicating system at a given level of complexity is
just as likely to have offpring of higher complexity as it is to have
offspring of lower complexity.

>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.

This is true.  That is why you do not find viable human populations
living next to black smokers on the sea-floor.  So?  There aren't
lobsters living in Mount Etna, either.

>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.

You haven't even yet demonstrated that there is such a phenomenon,
so why is a theory required to explain it?  Theories explain facts,
not gut feelings & suggestions.

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

Well, you did come to the right place.  I suggest a further visit
to http://www.talkorigins.org.

>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. 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.

It's too much for most people.  In fact, scientists are frequently
revolted by the way creationist keep bringing up this "eye by accident"
thing.  If you check out recent posts on talk.origins, I'm sure you'll find
something on it.  There's probably also a FAQ on this topic in archive.

>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. Right now I'm still doing Lorenz attractor
>and logistic equations and Henon maps.

You may want to look into the Tierra program.

						Chris

-- 
Christopher Heiny        Professor of Bizarre Theories
University of Ediacara   Offther-Hocking Chair of Lunar Influences
chris@eso.mc.xerox.com

For Ed Conrad: I am >NOT< a full-fledged professor of earth
               sciences at Michigan Technological University
-    -    -    -    -    -    -    -    -
    "You are lying, Ted!"
    Shrieked Mrs Anomalocaris,
    "Liar,
         liar!
             LIAR!
    You are a liar, Ted!
    You were mating with that _nathorsti_ tramp again,
    Weren't you, Ted?  Liar!"
    And then she threw the platter of trilobites at him.
        'Song of Anomalocaris - The Soap Opera'
        Season 246, Episode 118a: Edward and Agnes Divorce