Essays In Evolution

By

Ian Beardsley

© 2018 by Ian Beardsley


The Frankenstein Equation

Evolution of Ideas

Evolution Works The Same Way Computers Learn

The Constant of Evolution

Intro

Call them the Firstborn. Though they were not remotely human, they were flesh and blood,…

In their exploration they encountered life in many forms,…

And because in all the Galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than the Mind, they
encouraged its dawning everywhere. They became farmers in the fields of stars; they sowed,
and sometimes they reaped.

And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed.

In their ceaseless experimenting, they had learned to store knowledge in the structure of space
itself, and to preserve their thoughts for eternity in frozen lattices of light.

Arthur C. Clarke
3001, The Final Odyssey

What ever beings put us on this Earth, not only gave us potentials (and different potentials for
different geographic regions,… cultures) but a planet that was not only of temperatures not so
uninhabitable cold of an extreme as Mars, or uninhabitable hot of an extreme as Venus, but a
star to orbit that was right in the middle of the mass luminosity diagram on the main sequence,
to keep things stable enough for the billions of years required by the mechanism of evolution to
advance the seeds of life to something that could manage circumstances to its favor.

Not only were we given this, but sufficient circumstances for the existence of food, shelter, and
technology, and the potential, if we would be smart enough to use it all wisely, to become
independent of our our resource deposits, and succeed in creating one for ourselves to
guarantee our survival into space, not just within our solar system, but to other stars in the
galaxy, if not to beyond our galaxy to other galaxies.

The different potentials, with their different biases, endowed upon tribe to tribe of ape-men,
and to their descendants, the different cultures that formed of their respective geographic
isolations, eventually encountered with one another. Sometimes these biases clashed, and at
other times, differences were not only worked out, but created the increases in the potentials
by way of synthesis.

And, as such, is the setting of world of the the human being, that has become one capable
species known as homo sapiens.
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The Frankenstein Equation

By

Ian Beardsley

Copyright © 2018 By Ian Beardsley

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Mary Shelley, with her book Frankenstein (1818) has transformed me as a person, which is in-
deed the purpose of literature, it is just that different writers connect with different people. As a
scientist who has discovered the connection of natural life to artificial intelligence, her work has
become pivotal to setting my frame of mind. I have discovered the following,…

Where we see on the left hand side of the equation the elements central to artificial intelligence
and, on the right side the primordial precursors to natural life, the amino acids which are the
building blocks of natural life, and the compounds of DNA responsible for the instructions of nat-
ural life.

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It is at this point that we realize that getting carried away with the grandeur of our discovery
unchecked by a sense of human values, can result in a monster that can hinder human
progress as opposed to favoring it. Mary Shelly has her character, Victor Frankenstein saying,
…

I paused, examining and analyzing all of the minutiae of causation as exemplified in the change
from life to death, and death to life, until from the midst of the darkness a sudden light broke in
upon me — a light so brilliant and wondrous, yet so simple, that while I became dizzy with the
immensity of the prospect of which it illustrated, I was surprised that among so many men of
genius, who had directed their inquiries toward the same science that I alone should be re-
served to discover so astonishing a secret…

After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of
generation and life; nay more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless
matter.

But in retrospect, the same scientist says:

I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate
body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I desired it with an ardor that far ex-
ceeded moderation, but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breath-
less horror and disgust filled my heart.

With this I see the warning in the creation of monsters. The term robot was invented by Karl
Capek and first appeared in his 1921 play, R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). In this work,
his robots were not electronic artificial intelligence, but biological artificial intelligence, supposed
soulless servants to humanity. But not to his character Helena, who comes to visit Rossum to
tell him she feels the robots have a soul, and therefore feel the pain of their enslavement that
she wants them to be freed. Kapek used the idea of his robots to object to the enslavement of
humanity by the rich, and their justification for it by suggesting the poor don’t have a soul.

This brings us to The Rights of Man, (1940) by H.G. Wells, a work that became pivitol to the
United Nations’ formation of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He wrote,…

Since a man comes into this world through no fault of his own, since he is a joint inheritor of the
accumulations of the past, and since those accumulations are more than sufficient to satisfy the
claims that are here made on his behalf, it follows:

1) That every man without distinction of race or color is entitled to nourishment, housing, cover-
ing, medical care and attention sufficient to realize his full possibilities of physical and men-
tal development and to keep him in a state of health from his birth to death…

In the work he makes clear that when he says Man he means man and woman. Today we use
the word Humankind in place of Mankind. But they have alway meant the same thing.

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But now in 2017 that we face the prospect of making artificial intelligence, robots, that are self-
aware, that is are living beings, we have to ask if they have rights as well. Given they do not
require food, are stronger, and can think faster than humans, we come to the realization that if
they are given rights, they could destroy us. To solve this conundrum, Isaac Asimov, in his 1950
Book I, Robot, explores this issue introducing for the first time The Laws of Robotics. They are:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to
harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would
conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the
First or Second Laws.

Let’s see how these law work as they unfold in his stories. In I, Robot, a robot comes to believe
that in handling a space station that the graphs and dials from which it receives its orders are
his creator, which he calls The Master, because humans beings being inferior to robots, could
not have created him, something superior, so he kicks humans out of the control room and tells
them he will not longer take orders from them, but rather from the Master. The dialogue goes
like this,…

He turned to Powell. “What are we going to do now?”

Powell felt tired but uplifted. “Nothing. He’s just shown that he can run the station perfectly. I’ve
never seen an electron storm handled so well.”
“But nothing’s solved. You heard what he said of the Master. We can’t,—“
“Look, Mike, he follows the instructions of the Master by means of dials, instruments, and
graphs. That’s all we ever followed. As a matter of fact, it accounts for his refusal to obey us.
Obedience is the Second Law. No harm to humans is the first. How can he keep humans from
harm whether he knows it or not? Why, by keeping the energy beam stable. He knows he can
keep it more stable than we can, since he insists he’s the superior being, so he must keep us
out of the control room. It’s inevitable if you consider the Laws of Robotics.”
“Sure, but that’s not the point. We can’t let him continue with this nitwit stuff about The Master.”
“Why not?”
“Because whoever heard of such a damned thing? How are we going to trust him with the sta-
tion, if he doesn’t believe in Earth?”
“Can he handle the station?”
“Yes, but—“
“Then what’s the difference what he believes!”
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Ultimately I came to derive the following,…



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A peak at how that began,…


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But we notice,..

Which means,…
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Appendix

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The Author
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The Evolution of Ideas in The Sciences

By

Ian Beardsley

© 2018 by Ian Beardsley


 2 of 7

If we want to map a trajectory for the evolution of human ideas in science, we look at the
trajectory of works that look at the affects of science on humanity, as found in science fiction,
philosophy, … . To do this, we need a zero, or starting point and we can make a strong case for
the zero point being in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Media Studies Professor at Fordham
University Paul Levinson said:

“Prior to Mary Shelley there were no stories of a scientist working in a laboratory…

The fantastic things that happened in literature prior to Frankenstein were the result of
magicians, religious people, people who were half gods of an Ancient Greek.”

This puts the zero at 1818. The next point on our map is The Invisible Man, by H.G. Wells.
Then, The Rights of Man by H.G. Wells, RUR (Rossum’s Universal Robots) by Carl Capek, …
developments such as the world wide web, the first super computers (Technologies Eureka,
Kodiak,…)…

If we map these developments, we find the curve can be fit with 100 years times the cube root
of n, where n is the number of the development (i.e. Frankenstein 0, The Invisible Man 1, The
Rights of Man 2, …). We take the derivative and we have 1/3(100) is the rate at which ideas
develop and are approximately given by (33 years)n^(4/3). Here are the graphs and notice how
well the fit works:

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The Author

Evolution Works The Same Way Computers Learn

By

Ian Beardsley

© 2018 by Ian Beardsley




It is my intent to convert a computer into the evolution mechanism by creating neural network

where we see if starting with a gene for vision, the computer can learn what the visible
spectrum is that humans arrived at through evolution, because I found the most fundamental
component for a logic gate is where a silicon diode outputs at the same energy for a photon of
light at the beginning of the visible spectrum, if this OR gate is to turn on at twice the threshold
of its forward bias.



Basic Structure For The Neural Network
The Author

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The Constant of Evolution

By

Ian Beardsley

Copyright © 2018 by Ian Beardsley


 2 of 6

In my 2010 paper Bob Dylan and The Constant of Evolution (presented after this update) I
calculated the constant of evolution based on:

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We now use a more accurate value for the molar mass of air, and a more accurate value for the
constant of Earth gravity:

A key component of natural life sustenance is not just water (H2O) but, is air. Air is mostly
composed of diatomic oxygen gas (O2 20.95% by volume) and diatomic nitrogen gas (N2
78.09% by volume). Other components are:

Argon (0.93%)
Carbon Dioxide (0.03%)
Neon (0.0018%)
Helium (0.0005%)
Krypton (0.0001%)
Hydrogen (0.0005%)
Xenon (9E-6%)

The molar mass of O2 = 16.00 X 2 = 32.00 g/mol

The molar mass of N2 = 14.01 X 2 = 28.02 g/mol

0.2095(32.00) + 0.7809(28.02) +,…

yeilds:

Molar Mass of Air = 28.9656 g/mol ~ 29 g/mol

As an accepted figure.

The constant of gravity, g, is:

g=9.80655 meters/second^2 = 980.655 centimeters/second^2


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The Constant of Evolution and Bob Dylan

By Ian Beardsley

Copyright © 2010 by Ian Beardsley

Cover Art by Ian Beardsley

This project is one that has come back to life since more than 20
years ago, because I heard a Bob Dylan lyric that rejuvenated my
excitement in the project.

The lyric can be found in the wonderful piece “High Water” on his
CD “Love And Theft” released in 2001.

I will recite the lyric from memory:

George Lewis told the Englishman, Italian, and the Jew

You can’t open up your mind boys to every conceivable point of
view
They’ve got Charles Darwin trapped out there on highway five
The judge says to the high Sheriff, ‘I want him dead or alive
Either one, I don’t care’

Now some twenty odd years ago, I was a student in physics at the
University of Oregon. At some point, I was commuting about 40
miles on highway five from my Dad’s farm in the valley of
Elkhead, about ten miles from the town of Yoncalla, where I went
to High School. I drove a red Datsun long-bed pick-up, maybe
about 1975. In the commute, north up highway 5, which is
surrounded by pastures of rye and fescue, the sides of the highway
which have small to moderate in size pine trees growing on them, I
would stop and measure the lengths of branches and the angles
they made with the trunks of the trees. I was searching for
something in their structure that might be common to something in
the structure of fish and even humans. My theory was that all life
has over the millions of years evolved under certain constant
factors, like the force of gravity, the density of water, the density
of air, and so forth. And, owing to that, there may exist a constant
of evolution, a number that was a combination of certain units, like
pounds, inches, and so forth, that was common to all life. I was
calling this number, if it existed, “The Constant of Evolution”.
One day when I was out measuring trees, my truck broke down,
and there I was, Charles Darwin, trapped out there on highway
five, and God knows what the high sheriff was thinking. I managed
to hitch a ride home, or call my Dad, and get my truck running
again.

Thinking about that lyric got me wondering if the project was not
entirely futile. I thought it was futile at the time because I realized
there were just too many unquantifiable factors involved, the
amount of sun that hits a tree changes with the seasons, its angle of
incidence with the time of day and year, and the list went on. But
now I am thinking maybe I can look at those factors that are
quantifiable, and perhaps they won’t explain the connections
between all aspects of the different life forms, but perhaps will
explain a connection between certain aspects of the different life
forms.

The Constant of Evolution

The buoyancy of water is a force that involves two things about the
earth that is constant for all marine life, the density of water and
the constant of gravitational acceleration of the Earth.

The buoyancy of air is a force that is constant for all flying animals
and insects and depends on the natural constants, density of air,
and the force of gravity.

Gravity is a constant force particular to all animal life to counter in

standing erect.

These values for the earth have been behind making us what we
are through millions of years of evolution.
 Can we find a constant of evolution in dynamic interplay between
these physical quantities that have existed on earth, in the case of
gravity and water since its beginning some 5 billion years ago, and
in the case of air since plant life generated the atmosphere we
know today.

We begin by finding the equivalence of the density of water to the

buoyancy of air through a constant, instead of equating the
buoyancy of water to that of air, so the constant will be a number
with units.

The density of water defines volume in the metric system. We say

there is one gram of water per cubic centimeter.

Calculating the density of air is easy. A mole of air atoms, and here
we treat the mixture of the nitrogen and oxygen that make up air as
diatomic molecules, when in reality nitrogen is a molecule and
oxygen is a molecule – occupies a certain volume of space as
dependant on their temperature and the pressure present. This
volume is constant for all gases at specified temperatures and
pressures. We will calculate the volume of air at standard
temperature and pressure (STP), which is zero degrees centigrade,
and one atmosphere of pressure, which is the pressure of air at sea
level, and zero degrees centigrade is the freezing temperature of
water. That value is 22.4 liters per mole. A mole is a number of
atoms, which is 6.02E23. The E23 means there are 23 figures after
the six, all zeroes, except the two which remains the third digit. A
very large number of atoms. I have calculated the molar mass of
air in other works of mine (grams per mole of air). It is:

Earth Air = 2[(16.00)(0.21) + (14.01)(0.78)] = 28.5756

Since Earth air is about 21% oxygen and 78% nitrogen. The 16.00
and 14.01 are the molar masses of oxygen and nitrogen as given by
the periodic table of the elements and the factor of two is
introduced because nitrogen gas and oxygen gas are the binding of
two atoms of nitrogen and oxygen each. What are called diatomic
molecules. We always write N2 for nitrogen gas and O2 for
oxygen gas, not N and O, because as gases, they occur this way
naturally. We now write:

{(28.5756 grams air)/(mole)}{(mole)/(22.4 liters)}

= 1.28 grams of air per liter

We will now convert this value to grams per cubic centimeter,

because I prefer to work in the cgs system (centimeters-grams-
seconds).

1 liter is 1000 cubic centimeters, so

{(1.28 grams air/(liter)}{(liter)/(1000 cubic centimeters)}

= 0.00128 grams of air per cubic centimeter

Earth surface gravity is 980 centimeters per second squared,

Which we will write:

980 cm/s^2

Our equation will be:

C(Density Of Water) = (earth gravity)/(density of air)

Where C is the constant of evolution. We plug in the numbers, and

solve for C.
C(1 g water)/(cm^3) = (980 cm/s^2)/(0.00128 g air)/(cm^3)

C{(g)(s^2)(0.00128 g)} = 980 (cm^7)

C = 765,625 [(cm^7)]/[(sec^2)(g)^2]

This reads, the constant of evolution is seven hundred and sixty

five thousand six hundred and twenty five centimeters to the
seventh per seconds squared grams squared.

I need to find where this value occurs in the physiology of both

birds and fish, if not in land animals and plant and tree life.

The density of sea water is about the same as that of fresh water,
not exceeding 1.035 g/cm^3. 

Note:

Yes, all these factors vary a little under different physical conditions.
That is why I calculated, as I said later in the essay, the density of air
at standard temperature and pressure, which is the temperature of air
at zero degrees centigrade, and one atmosphere of pressure (sea
level). I have since checked charts for density of air at extremes of
9,000 feet (density of a gas varies with altitude due to the change in
pressure) and the change was too small to have a big effect on my
constant, because the constant is such a big number. I checked for
variance of buoyancy with change in water temperature, which was
again too small to affect the outcome much at a range of earth
temperatures. At this point, the paper does point out that the density
of salt water is not much different than that of fresh water. Ideally, I
would like to hone the constant for a value using an average over the
extreme ranges, like the highest altitude at which a bird will fly. I
found the density for air at room temperature and 1 atmosphere, and
it was only
2 hundredths of a difference in kilograms per liter from my value at
freezing temperature. I have been planning on writing a segment
about all this for the paper, but I was sure already that the differences
were so small in comparison to the large constant, because I worked
at high altitudes and water didn't boil that much faster at high altitude
than in the valley, and I have swam in the ocean and streams noticing
the feeling of the water to be about the same, not to mention
replacing some fresh water with salt is going to make little difference
in that salt does not weigh much more than water to have that great
of an effect in the ocean. My hunches all turned out right, but
technically It would be appropriate to go into this in the paper, I just
felt either some people would know this, and others would research it,
or feel it from experience. However, these are good questions, and
they afford me to get to the task of elaborating on this subject.

My constant of evolution is a number that is not just a constant of

evolution but is a number that is no doubt unique to the planet earth
out of all the perhaps billions of world that exist in the universe, and
the uses of it may apply to many fields and open up an uncountable
amount of doors to new ideas.

Ian Beardsley
February 28, 2010
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The Author