Re: Letters: What's the use of evolution?
- From: Arkalen <skizzir@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 09 Sep 2007 14:20:54 -0000
On Sep 9, 2:15 pm, Robert Carnegie <rja.carne...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Ye Old One wrote:
Letters: What's the use of evolution?
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/letters/storie...
The following letter, and the subsequent replies, appeared in this
weeks Dallas Morning News.
I really like the last reply :)
I suppose the first letter calls on NASA, not us, to comment on
evolution in Space Shuttle and Mars rover design. I suppose that Mars
rovers in future will be based on missions that didn't plough straight
into the Martian ground on entry or miss the planet entirely or
malfunction shortly aer landing, and not on those that did, so there's
selection; and I wonder if the contours of the Shuttle hull and wings
were designed, or evolved in simulation - the chronology might be
wrong for that. Now if they could keep the thing from moulting...
And even if the design process isn't really like evolution (kind of
like the evolution of cars... it has similarities to biological
evolution, but significant dissimilarities too which we can use to
disprove ID to some extent), the Theory of Evolution as a concept has
been coopted by the engineering community to try and create genetic
algorithms, learning algorithms, and so on.
Even though none of those applications works completely like
biological evolution they're completely inspired from it, engineers
would probably never had thought of them if Darwin hadn't come up with
his theory.
I have no doubt that NASA uses genetic algorithms to solve some
problems, and as for the robots it sends on Mars... Robotics owes a
LOT to biology in general and the theory of evolution in particular.
So in conclusion, the Theory of Evolution wasn't necessary to
calculate orbits but it was probably useful in building the Mars
Rover, and it's *certainly* used for a lot of the thousand other stuff
NASA scientists and engineers do.
.
- References:
- Letters: What's the use of evolution?
- From: Ye Old One
- Re: Letters: What's the use of evolution?
- From: Robert Carnegie
- Letters: What's the use of evolution?
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