Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Reply to comment

mindyhuskins's picture

To add on to this, this idea

To add on to this, this idea may even help explain certain things in evolution and the world in general. When two animals or two cultures in completely different parts of the world evolve in such a way that they are similar to each other, it can be confusing. Why do these two birds have similar beaks? Why do these two cultures share such a similar religion or similar clothing styles? They have never come in contact with each other before. This is called parallel evolution. If we use this Library idea and apply it, it makes parallel evolution make a whole lot of sense. If everything is inside this "Library of Babel" than both of these two animals or cultures etc. just happened to find it at the same time probably using different methods. It helps explain why people can use completely different processes and come to the same or similar conclusions. So not only can this method explain oddities in biological and other evolutionary processes, it also ties in creativity, autonomy, and randomness.

Reply

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
11 + 7 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.