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Introduction

Real-world analogues of biological evolution

• Biblical scholarship. One interesting example along this line is recent work comparing various manuscripts of the Bible, particularly the New Testament. The Bible as we have it today has come down through a long string of copies and translations -- the original manuscripts are long since lost. When scholars examine these documents, they find a very well-defined pattern of successive copy errors, in most cases accidental, which fit nicely into a hierarchical pattern that establishes very clearly which manuscripts are older than others Hallowell2011; Ehrman2005]. This is a perfect analogue of how mutations can be used to determine the hierarchical "family tree" of biological species.

• Computer viruses. A computer virus is so similar to real biological processes that it has even acquired a biological name. Computer viruses are segments of computer code that are copied and transmitted from computer to computer by subverting widely available application software or even the built-in operating system. Considerable havoc was wreaked on computer users worldwide until antivirus programs became widely available and installed, and even now they are a significant hazard of the computer-Internet world. Information on how computer viruses work is available in numerous online sources, including an excellent Wikipedia article [CompVirus2011]. The analogue with evolution isn't as good, though, because the "copies" generally do not exhibit errors that can be taken as mutations over time. However, the "arms war" between those devising these viruses and those at antiviral software firms developing software to combat them is very much analogous to the "arms war" fought between competing species, and is also analogous to the arms war fought between modern medical science and ever-more-drug-resistant disease organisms.

• Economics. It has been recognized since the 19th century that biological evolution has much in common with economics. Both fields are described by a complex interdependence of species and even individuals within a species. Competition for scarce resources and customers, growth, and response to changing environment characterize both fields. 20th century economist Milton Friedman noted that markets act as vehicles of natural selection in the economic sphere -- firms compete for customers; unsuccessful firms lose market share and subsequently either go bankrupt or have their assets acquired by a competitor. Both biological species and commercial entities face potentially life-threatening changes in the environment -- climate change for species and fundamental new technologies or lifestyle changes for firms. In both arenas, the "invisible hand" of competition and selection succeeds in forging a worldwide system of remarkable sophistication, specialization and effectiveness [Evolutionary2011].

  Along this line, it is amusing to note that many creationists and others who are skeptical of biological evolution nonetheless are staunch supporters of unfettered free-market economics as the optimal route for economic advancement. At the least, such persons are being intellectually inconsistent in defending Darwinian processes in one arena but denying them in another. And they are being additionally inconsistent if they accept the need, say, to take an antibiotic prescription through its full course, in order to prevent the evolution of highly drug-resistant pathogens, yet reject the power of evolution to shape the larger biological world over the multi-billion-year history of the earth.

• Linguistics. It is clear that the transmission and proliferation of language has numerous parallels with biological evolution. Humans "copy" language facility from one human to another, usually from mother and father to young children, but there are often subtle differences from generation to generation, particularly if a group becomes separated from its parent society. Individual "species" (dialects) and "phyla" (language families) have formed, and, in addition, languages have become ever more sophisticated to express ever-more sophisticated ideas. Interestingly enough, it was Charles Darwin who had the original insight into this phenomenon, and even today there is no better discussion of this topic than this excerpt from his 1871 book The Descent of Man [Darwin1871, pg. 57-59]:

  The formation of different languages and of distinct species, and the proofs that both have been developed through a gradual process, are curiously parallel. But we can trace the formation of many words further back than that of species, for we can perceive how they actually arose from the imitation of various sounds. We find in distinct languages striking homologies due to community of descent, and analogies due to a similar process of formation. The manner in which certain letters or sounds change when others change is very like correlated growth. We have in both cases the re-duplication of parts, the effects of long-continued use, and so forth. The frequent presence of rudiments, both in languages and in species, is still more remarkable. The letter m in the word am, means I; so that in the expression I am, a superfluous and useless rudiment has been retained. In the spelling also of words, letters often remain as the rudiments of ancient forms of pronunciation. Languages, like organic beings, can be classed in groups under groups; and they can be classed either naturally according to descent, or artificially by other characters. Dominant languages and dialects spread widely, and lead to the gradual extinction of other tongues. A language, like a species, when once extinct, never, as Sir C. Lyell remarks, reappears. The same language never has two birth-places. Distinct languages may be crossed or blended together. (2) We see variability in every tongue, and new words are continually cropping up; but as there is a limit to the powers of the memory, single words, like whole languages, gradually become extinct. As Max Muller (3) has well remarked: "A struggle for life is constantly going on amongst the words and grammatical forms in each language. The better, the shorter, the easier forms are constantly gaining the upper hand, and they owe their success to their own inherent virtue." To these more important causes of the survival of certain words, mere novelty and fashion may be added; for there is in the mind of man a strong love for slight changes in all things. The survival or preservation of certain favoured words in the struggle for existence is natural selection.

  (Numbers in parentheses in the above are Darwin's footnote references.)

• Plagiarism. Biologist Kenneth Miller recounts how he once detected an incidence of plagiarism in one of his biology classes. He found two papers that were curiously similar, even though there were attempts to disguise the fact -- rearranged paragraphs, etc. But the clincher for the case was that each student had misspelled the same six words in exactly the same way. When confronted with this fact, the students recognized that their case was lost and surrendered to the school's disciplinary system [Miller2008, pg. 100]. In this case the spelling mistakes are directly analogous to mutations that arise in biological species. When such mutations fit into a nice hierarchical pattern, as they do in biological species, this constitutes very strong evidence for common ancestry and descent with modification. For additional discussion, see DNA.

Computer simulations of evolution

In addition, many studies have been done using computer programs to directly simulate the process of biological evolution, as a tool to better understand the interplay between mutations, adaptations, and environment. Along this line, the present author has done one study in which an evolution-like process was used to generate segments of English text that in many cases are quite similar to segments taken from real Dickens literature. For details, see English text.

Conclusions

For additional discussion, see DNA, English text, Theory and Deceiver.

References