I've been reading a very interesting book called "Artificial Life" by Steven Levy. Basically it is a sort of history of things like genetic programming and cellular automata on computers.
One of the more interesting things that came out of some of the work was that mutation was actually a very minor element, and that crossover could produce as much variation.
Obviously it isn't proof of evolution but lots of the processes discovered were amazingly similar. It even showed that punctuated equilibream arose almost spontaneously, the necessary "genes" would slowly build up in the population (not necessarily within the same organism) and produce a very sudden population wide change.
A very interesting book, well worth a read.
One of the more interesting things that came out of some of the work was that mutation was actually a very minor element, and that crossover could produce as much variation.
Obviously it isn't proof of evolution but lots of the processes discovered were amazingly similar. It even showed that punctuated equilibream arose almost spontaneously, the necessary "genes" would slowly build up in the population (not necessarily within the same organism) and produce a very sudden population wide change.
A very interesting book, well worth a read.
