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Author | Topic: Have complex human-made things been designed? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
andorg Junior Member (Idle past 5713 days) Posts: 9 From: London, UK Joined: |
The idea that living organisms were designed comes from a common belief that complex human-made things have been designed. But is this correct?
Let's see examples of the most complex human-made things like: modern Nokia mobile phone, Boing 747 airplane, Windows-XP operating system, and let's asks the following question: have these very complex systems been designed? It is not easy to trace the history of living organisms emerging on earth and to prove if they were designed or evolved, as it is not possible to find all the required evidences. But for the human-made things the history of their emergence is well known. If one looks at the history of the above mentioned human-made complex things, it becomes obvious that all of them have been evolved. Airplanes, mobile phones, computer products have been evolved step-by-step, by trial-and-error method. No single human and even not a huge group of humans is able of designing a complex thing that never have existed before. Any complex thing appears upon a base of another complex things that already exist. The most intelligent persons like Leonardo Da Vinchi, Newton or Aristotle could never have designed an airplane, a mobile phone or a computer program. And Bill Gates with his team could not have designed Windows XP in 1981, when they created DOS. And not because of the short of intelligence or small amount of people. In order to appear, Windows XP required a long series of steps, where the product of each step had to be checked by the environment: the market. Lots of computer programs improved by small changes, then were exposed to the market and those which survived became a basis for the future programs. This is the only way that could allow Windows XP to appear. All inventions in the world are actually very small steps based on something that already exists. No invention can create something much more complex than currently existing. So the conclusion is that all human-made complex things have been evolved and not designed. And if it is true from human-made complex things - why should it be wrong for the natural complex things (the living organisms)?
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andorg Junior Member (Idle past 5713 days) Posts: 9 From: London, UK Joined: |
Design is one of possible means of creating the final product. Another way is for example, an automatic creation. Cell phones are created in plants by an automatic process (and this process can even be driven by robots, not humans). Horses are created by an automatic process of cell division, DNA copying, protein production.
But how a new cell phone model is designed? Well, several engineers using their knowledge of many other existing cell phone models, using engineering principles that they learned at university and their previous experience create a new model. Does Nokia 6288 phone differ much from Nokia 6248? Is this a real achievement? Lots of new models are created all the time by different companies. Is Windows XP a great achievement comparing to Windows 2000? The invention of wheel is a much greater achievement and it was not done by design. The invention of Newton's laws which has dramatically changed all our world was not a product of design. The invention of an airplane was just trial-and-error, not design. Did Wright brothers design their airplane? Does not seem so. Is mechanical watch a product of design? Not at all! It was invented by Peter Henlein from Nuremberg about the year 1500. Before that, tower clocks driven by weights have existed and also small mechanisms (like mechanical dolls) driven by mainsprings have existed. Peter Henlein connected the two notions: weight-driven clock and mainspring-driven mechanism and created a watch. Why just him and not other thousand of watchmakers did it? Because it was a brilliant idea that came to his mind. He did not design anything. I think he did not even know this word. Design is just one of many ways to create the final product - that's all. No matter how products are created: by design or by an automatic process - only the final product is subjected to the scoring of the environment. One can spend 10 years to "design" a very complex computer program, but until this program is completed and put into work, it is impossible to say with 100% confidentiality if it bad or good. The only way to understand if a product (or an object) is good or bad is to put it at work, put it into the environment where it is intended. Humans are able to predict how a thing will work at the environment. Humans are able to perform a mental experiment, imagine, how the future product will be scored by the environment. But they may never 100% know this. Before the product is completed and put into environment (market) it is never possible to know if it is good enough or not. So it is not correct to say that airplane or computer are products of design. I mean not the concrete airplane F-16 #1234567 and not the concrete computer that I am currently working on - because they are not products of design, they are assembled on automatic plants. I mean computers and airplanes in general. They are not products of design. They are products of evolution, where at some of the small steps of this evolution design was used.
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andorg Junior Member (Idle past 5713 days) Posts: 9 From: London, UK Joined: |
"...thus DOS was designed but evolved to Windows XP through various steps ie Windows 1, Windows 95, Windows 98 etc."
DOS was not designed from zero. Lots of operating systems have existed before DOS. The phrase "DOS was designed" means "DOS was developed by one of possible software development methods called 'design'". One programmer draws diagrams before he writes code, other doesn't. So what? All software products are based on previous products, previous knowledge, previous achievements. Could Von Neumann "design" DOS? No. He was very clever, but the previous steps required for developing DOS have not existed at his time.
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andorg Junior Member (Idle past 5713 days) Posts: 9 From: London, UK Joined: |
"The idea for a new technology builds on the technology that already exists, but the new machine is made from scratch".
Every human being is also made from scratch. Just from one fertilized sex cell. So are all of us manufactured or designed? We are all different, don't we? But we are all have been created by an automatic process of DNA replication, protein production, cell division etc. A new model of an airplane is designed, but what is this design? People design things using strict rules, that they have learned from their predecessors, from universities etc. Suppose, you start designing an airplane or a computer program. Can you design something that would not resemble anything existing? Something much more complex than other existing things? No. It is always possible "at some extent" to predict what you design. And the same way a biological process creating a new organism is predictable (at some extent). When you design a new software - do you invent a new programming language, new compiler, new operating system etc. for it? No, you use the existing things. So "to design from scratch" actually means "to create using existing rules". If you are a software engineer, you are of course familiar with Software Design Techniques, Design Patterns etc. These are just rules by which the creation process is drawn. And any manufacturing process also has rules. And a living organism creation process also has rules. So what is so special in design? Using the "design" term we can say that a swallow designs its nest, as soon as this nest can be very different depending on the place where the swallow lives, where it finds materials etc. But any living organism is different depending on the environment where it grows. So also any human designed product is different from others, as soon as the circumstances in which it was designed differ. Design is one of many possible way to create new things, i.e. a way to create steps during the evolution. But I do not see why design is so special and why only design may drive the biological evolution.
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andorg Junior Member (Idle past 5713 days) Posts: 9 From: London, UK Joined: |
The role of a single person in the technological evolution is vanishing. If not Marconi - someone else would have invented the radio. Human beings play a role of making a variety of different things, while these things are checked by the environment. But the variety can be done by other processes without humans.
Evolution is a constant search for better solutions suiting the conditions of the environment. Evolution can be seen as an optimization algorithm - for any object that can be created the environment assigns its score. So evolution optimizes the function which assigns scores to objects. Evolution is a constant search for more and more highly scored objects. But the concrete search algorithm can be different. The algorithm of "choosing the next object" can be implemented using human brains (like in technological evolution) or it can be implementing using genetic mechanisms (like in biological evolution). It can be even some computer program (like in artificial life simulations).
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andorg Junior Member (Idle past 5713 days) Posts: 9 From: London, UK Joined: |
AlphaOmegakid write: "The word design infers both a planning process and a production process as you are using it. Both require intelligence".
Sorry, production doesn't require. A completely automatic and not intelligent plant may produce very complex things. AlphaOmegakid write: "Human made things don't emerge". You may call it as you like: "emerge", "appear" or whatever. Any thing appears from somewhere. That's what I meant by "emerge". Perhaps this is not the best word. You miss one point. When you (or other intelligent person) designs something, you do not know in advance that the product of your design will be good. This knowledge you may get only after your product is completed and subjected to the environment. Design alone is blind. Without actual information. The information always comes from the environment. Design is always prediction. The most important part of the process of (emerging, appearing or call it as you like) of objects in our world is checking them by the environment. It has nothing to do with design. And please do not attack my education: I have M.Sc. in applied mathematics of a known university and I was educated in a way lots of people are educated. I did not study science in church, i admit it. And I know what I want to explain here: design is just one of many possible ways to create things. By the way: the word "design" is modern. Did ancient Greeks design?
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