The Blind Watchmaker Simulation

Introduction: In this lab simulation, we studied the different factors that go into natural selection. These factors were things such as: fertility, the complexity of genes, the use of natural selection versus not using it, and the rate of mutation. All of these things would then affect the amount of generations it would take to get the “target phrase.” This target phrase was used as a tool to understand the complexity of some genes compared to the simplicity of others. The first chapter in Dawkins’ book, “The Blind Watchmaker,” correlates the most when it comes to what we studied in the lab. In the first chapter, he describes that complex things such as animals must have been made by design. However, he also explains that this designer is
My hypothesis for this experiment was that if there are more children per generation, then it will increase the rate of evolution. I believed this to be the case because there is more opportunity for mutation and for diversification in offspring, if there is more offspring. This could be easily backed up with a basic knowledge of statistics. The second experiment, was a basic comparison to the first test. It was to see if the fertility rate and a simplified gene code would get a different result. For this experiment, my hypothesis was that if the adaptation is more simplistic, then it will increase to rate of evolution. I believed this to be true because with a less complex adaptation, there is more chance that it will reach the genetic code needed. We discussed this idea in class. This can be backed up by an analogy that Dawkins made. This analogy is that it would be almost impossible for airplane parts that were sitting in a junk yard to be blown up by the wind and be put together to create an actual airplane (Dawkins, 1996). Why is this? This is mostly because it is an incredibly complex structure. As stated by Dawkins it would take probably the entire existence of the Earth for the probability of that event to