Re: Stephen Wolfram vs. Charles Darwin on natural selection

"DK" <dk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:gect2p$m5p$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In article <geac95$2hs3$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, dkomo
<dkomo871@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I have yet to see a good quantitative measure of complexity. I don't
think the essence of complexity can be captured quantitatively.

How about the following?

The more ways a system can be broken (e.g., its properties changed
in some way), the more complex is the system.

Not in the case of parasites. In general, I don't think complexity is
correlated to organismic fitness.

It cerainly is not. It's would be silly to argue that bacteria are more
complex than mammals, yet the former constitute majority of not
only cell count but a biomass on this planet. If fitness is capacity
to reproduce, bacteria are more fit than mammals.

DK


That is one of the best ideas for measuring biological complexity I have
come across! :-)

'The reverse' of your method would be to - whilst similarly focus on
biological (typically procreation promoting) functions - try to roughly
estimate how many responses are on an animal's (or plant's) repertoire of
responses (to all relevant kinds of stimulation - possibly endogenous as
well as exogenous stimulation).

It is unclear what dkomo meant by a parasite - does a cookoo qualify?
Amongst different kinds of parasitic organisms there are certainly many
different degrees of species-typical complexity.



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