Introducing Evolution

The fact that humans have evolved from apes does not force any particular moral conclusion. Our evolutionary past is one thing. Our future is quite another.

This is not to say that science can tell us everything. Science can’t tell us how we should live, for example. Science can inform us only about how things are, not about how things should be.

All attempts to answer that question before 1859 are worthless and …we will be better off if we ignore them completely.

The battle between science and superstition is not over yet…

And unlike other influential ideas from the 19th century, such as Marxism and Freud’s psychoanalysis, the theory of evolution has not been discredited. On the contrary, the evidence in its favour is greater than ever.

The theory of evolution by natural selection is not only at the heart of modern biology, but is becoming increasingly important in many other fields, from artificial intelligence and psychology to philosophy, anthropology and even sociology.

Computer programs that evolve in this way are called “genetic algorithms”.

Here we have all three elements of natural selection: competition, copying and mutation. Computer programs could therefore evolve and adapt. We can therefore be regarded as living things.

That is why this field of artificial intelligence is called “artificial life”.

Anything that evolves by natural selection must therefore be regarded as a living thing, not metaphorically but literally. Conversely, anywhere we find life, we will find evolution by natural selection.

If we ever discover life on another planet, we can be sure that it will be the product of an evolutionary process.

Richard Dawkins has argued that the capacity to evolve by natural selection is in fact the defining feature of life.