Evolution

Studying real evolution through artificial means.

Darwin-at-Home, a project harnessing individual computers has been used to study how artificial (virtual/digital) creatures can evolve. Evolution: that's how the actual living things have become more complex, sophisticated, adapted - through minute changes from generation to generation, over time.




http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7989532956224708331&hl=en

In this video, we see artificial creatures who have evolved (from various initial object shapes) the ability to walk. In this case of course, there were gods involved: the researchers who initiated the project. As some mildly religious persons will say, God laid out the rules and told us to procreate and populate this universe under our our free will and our own responsibility.

My own opinion is that the evolution process is an entirely probabilistic affair, with the help of the brute force of an extremely high number of random interactions between components.