I’m going to be driving to the Varsity Theater in Dinkytown this afternoon. It’s time for a Café Scientifique on the subject of “Understanding Evolution” at 6:00 this evening. We have a 3 person panel, with Mark Borello of UMTC talking about the history of evolutionary thought, Scott Lanyon of the Bell Museum describing evolutionary patterns, and me saying a few words about public misconceptions about evolution. It should be fun.

One word on what to expect, though: this is Café Scientifique. It’s not just us three babbling at you; we’re each going to give a 10-15 minute overview, but the main objective is to get the audience talking and asking questions. So show up, but be prepared to contribute!

I’m going to have to visit the American Museum of Natural History and see the
new permanent exhibit on human origins. It sounds very good; they’ve done something I try to do in some of my talks on evolution, splitting it between the more easily comprehended, sexy stuff of fossils and reconstructions and the more abstract and more recent material on molecular biology and genetics. There’s an oft-told myth among the creationists that evolution is dying, but it’s precisely that explosion of new information we’re gaining from molecular approaches that has been revitalizing the research for some time now.

The do throw one sop to the culture wars:

One issue cannot be entirely sidestepped in any public presentation of human evolution: that many people in this country doubt and vocally oppose the very concept. In a corner of the hall, several scientists are shown in video interviews professing the compatibility of their evolution research with their religious beliefs.

This is a new permanent exhibit, but I vaguely recall seeing a video presentation like this at a museum somewhere; was it on display at the AMNH before? It’s not a big deal, as what I remember of it was being faintly embarrassed at these scientists professing to be proud of their archaic bone-in-the-nose magic rituals. That part will be skippable—I look forward to seeing the real evidence, that wonderful piece of the universe that is untainted by the delusions of tradition.

Reader Ted sent along a rebuttal to that pathetic evolution “simulation” written by a creationist—it’s a much better simulation that was presented at TAM5, called IC Evolver. The simulation plays a simple game that has a strategy that can be encoded in strings, and it starts with a set of randomized strategies, which it then uses and modifies, generation after generation, to maximize the score. Two cool things about it: one is that it modifies the strategy with common genetic operations, like insertions, deletions, point mutations, and recombination, and displays them graphically so you can see what’s happening. Another is that it tests for irreducible complexity—when there are 5 components, and removing any one of them reduces the score it can get to 0, it flags it.

You can see the scores steadily improve, and you can also see irreducible complexity evolve.

Turn it loose and let it run in the background. It works fairly quickly.

What’s a philosopher doing writing about science? Willikins has a short article on the idea that bioturbation was a major factor in the Cambrian explosion. I can go with that: the Cambrian and pre-Cambrian seem to have been times when the sea floor was covered with algal mats, and the successful animal forms were grazers who scraped the surface and worms that burrowed through them. Along with changes in atmospheric oxygen, the radical remodeling of the marine substrate were the major biologically induced changes in the environment.