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Simple Systems Influence in the Evolution of Life, July 11th, 2004
The origins of biological complexity have been debated since antiquity.
For a long time it was assumed that the magnitude of the complexity was so great that
it could never have arisen from any ordinary natural process, and therefore must have
been inserted from outside through some kind of divine plan. However, with the publication
of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859 it became clear that there were natural processes
that could in fact shape features of biological organisms. There was no specific argument for
why natural selection should lead to the development of complexity, although Darwin appears to
have believed that this would emerge somewhat like a principle in physics. In the century or so
after the publication of Origin of Species many detailed aspects of natural selection were elucidated,
but the increasing use of traditional mathematical methods largely precluded serious analysis of
complexity. Continuing controversy about contradictions with religious accounts of creation caused
most scientists to be adamant in assuming that every aspect of biological systems must be shaped
purely by natural selection. And by the 1980s natural selection had become firmly enshrined as a
force of practically unbounded power, assumed--though without specific evidence--to be capable of
solving almost any problem and producing almost any degree of complexity.
As a computer scientist who has worked with cellular automata I find Wolfram's point of view on simple systems that
can create compexity to be of great interest in the debate about the origins of life. Why? There are a couple of
major impacts that simple systems have.My own work on cellular automata in the early 1980s showed that great complexity could be generated just from simple programs, without any process like natural selection. But although I and others believed that my results should be relevant to biological systems there was still a pervasive belief that the level of complexity seen in biology must somehow be uniquely associated with natural selection. In the late 1980s the study of artificial life caused several detailed computer simulations of natural selection to be done, and these simulations reproduced various known features of biological evolution. But from looking at such simulations, as well as from my own experiments done from 1980 onwards, I increasingly came to believe that almost any complexity being generated had its origin in phenomena similar to those I had seen in cellular automata--and had essentially nothing to do with natural selection. History [of biological complexity] from A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram. In our quest to discover life on other planets it's important to understand the origins of life on Earth, and to understand it from a real world point of view grounded in reality. What Wolfram has discovered is that there are simple systems that generate complexity at the same level of complexity as any complex system. In addition these simple systems demonstrate that life can (arrise and) evolve without the need for an Intelligent Designer. Stephen Wolfram, in his ground breaking work "A New Kind of Science", has proven beyond any doubt (with working programs) that there is a critical threshold that when crossed enables simple systems to produce as much complexity as any complex system. This threshold is an amazing and important characteristic of the Universe that we exist within. It applies and has deep implications to many fields including biology, chemestry, physics, information science, and philosophy. He calls this principle "computational equilivance" in that simple systems can be computationally equilivant to complex systems.
"The very simplest rules will just give simple behavior...
But what the Principle of Computational Equivalence says is that
if one looks at just a few more rules, one will suddenly cross a threshold -
and end up with maximal computational sophistication."
It is apparent from Wolfram's work and the work of others on the natural creation of life that life can and does emerge from
natural processes. While we are not yet able to generate life from lifeless raw chemicals and electricity in a lab,
I suspect that that is only a matter of time.Second paragraph on page 5 of "A New Kind of Science and the Future of Matematics". Wolfram's work desmonstrates how simple systems can shape biological forms such as shells, plants, animals. A New Kind of Science provides insights into the development of the variety of complex three dimensional shapes that life forms have. With an understanding of how simple systems can generate complexity it's clear that no other "more complex" explainations are necessary for the existance of life. Certainly by applying Occam's Rasor (see principle of unnecessary plurality and Keep it Simple Smarty ) religious explainations of and requirements for a designer are mute in light of the discovery that simple systems can generate complexity as complex as any complex system can generate. Intelligent Design advocates say that a tree or a person are too complex to have naturally evolved and therefor that there must be a designer, namely their God. With simple systems proven to be able to generate complexity with maximal sophistication the Intelligent Design argument crumbles into the dust heap of history. It looks like the Intelligent Design folks are out of luck and must face the beautiful music of a Godless Accident. A New Kind of Science challenges the reliance on natural selection by positing that the mechanism of simple systems can explain and demonstrate how what were throught to be "naturally selected" characteristics of living organisms may actually be simple systems at work. Simple systems that are actively generating a variety of natural forms and behaviours from the continuium of possibilities that can arrise as a result of the simple systems in play. It looks like the Evolutionary Biologists need to review and learn from A New Kind of Science and revise their theories to incorporate it's discoveries. To do otherwise is to ignore the new possibility that life could have arrisen from the computational power inherent in the universe that is demonstrated by certain simple systems. url 
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