ID the Future Intelligent Design, Evolution, and Science Podcast
Topic

neural networks

Beautiful Baby Face

The Optimal Design of Our Eyes

Does the vertebrate eye make more sense as the product of engineering or unguided evolutionary processes? On this ID The Future, host Andrew McDiarmid concludes his two-part conversation with physicist Brian Miller about the intelligent design of the vertebrate eye. Did you know your brain gives you a glimpse of the future before you get to it? And what about the claim that human eyes are badly designed? Dr. Miller discusses all this and more. This is Part 2 of a two-part interview. Visit idthefuture.com for show notes and full archive! Read More ›
Animal Algorithms

Animal Algorithms Webinar Pt. 2: Author Q&A

Today’s ID the Future is Part 2 of a recent live webinar with Eric Cassell fielding questions about his new book, Animal Algorithms: Evolution and the Mysterious Origin of Ingenious Instincts. He and host Casey Luskin explore the engineering wonders of web-spinning spiders and their extraordinary silk, and the challenge of transforming solitary insects into social insects (with their complex and interdependent caste systems) via a blind step-by-step evolutionary process, and the many thousands of genetic changes required. What does Cassell consider the best explanation? He invokes design theorist William Dembski’s work with No Free Lunch theorems to argue that blind processes are a no-go for explaining their origin. From there Luskin opens the webinar up to questions from the live audience. Have researchers tried to locate these algorithms in the DNA of the animals exhibiting complex programmed behaviors? Do any of the insects Cassell discusses use pheromones and, if so, how? What do biologists make of the apparently purposive nature of all these different kinds of complex programmed behaviors? Cassell fields these and other questions and says that more progress would be possible if not for the fact that so many scientists are infected with what he terms teleophobia — an unwillingness to recognize evidence of teleology and purpose in biology. Another question concerns examples of striking convergence among social insects and gifted animal navigators. Cassell argues that although the evolutionary community waves the term “convergent evolution” at such instances, they actually pose a powerful challenge to evolutionary theory.

Animal Algorithms

New Book Spotlights High Tech Animal Navigation

Today’s ID the Future spotlights the new book Animal Algorithms: Evolution and the Mysterious Origin of Ingenious Instincts. The author, Eric Cassell, joins host and Baylor computer engineering professor Robert J. Marks to discuss the groundbreaking book and, in particular, the chapters on some of the animal kingdom’s most stunning navigators—the arctic tern, homing pigeons, the monarch butterfly, and the desert ant, among others. Cassell has degrees in biology and engineering, and he draws on these and his decades of professional expertise in aircraft navigation systems to show that these creatures instinctively employ navigational technologies that humans have only recently mastered. According to Cassell, their skills are driven by sophisticated algorithms embedded in their brains. But what created these algorithms in the first place? He argues that mindless evolution is a poor candidate for the job. A better candidate, he suggests, is the same cause that builds sophisticated algorithms today—intelligent agency. Tune in as Cassell and Marks touch on everything from magnetic, sun, and celestial navigation to chemotaxis, dead reckoning, spherical geometry, great circle routes, neural networks, and … Viking sun stones. Read the enthusiastic endorsements, and pick up your copy of the book here.