Two Puzzles[draft]

How does a single cell develop into a complex multicellular organism? And how do intricate multicellular structures like eyes evolve?

Both questions concern the origins of multicellular complexity. One in the context of development, the other in evolution.

Our solutions to these puzzles were not good. A divine designer explained eyes, and preformationism—the idea that the egg (or sperm) contains a tiny, but fully formed organism—explained the complexity of a grown organism.

Both solutions just shunt the mystery further back. In both cases, these solutions just shunted the mystery further back instead of resolving it.

A solution to the first puzzle was given by Charles Darwin (Ayala, 2007; Dawkins, 1986). His key insight can be captured in a Darwinian recipe.

Thinking Tools

The aim of this website is to build and test-drive some thinking tools. By thinking tools, I mean stripped down versions of reality in the form of computer simulations.

The nice thing about computer simulations is that, with some effort, we can track precisely what is going on. Even better, we can poke, prod, and intervene on the system in ways that may be empirically (or even ethically) constrained in the real world. This is a great boon, for in much of biology, our explanations derive from seeing what happens to things when we manipulate them (Woodward, 2014). If we can think clearly about these simpler systems, we might garner some insight into the real world.

The subject matter is the evolution and development of multicellular organisms. This is an enormously complex subject, so we have to pick a place to begin. I’m going to start by looking at gene regulatory networks.