SeeBelow{at}SeeBelow.Nut wrote in news:btcpc6$b0q$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org:

> There is a well known idea that if you could put billions of monkeys
> onto billions of typewriters, and keep them typing away, then
> eventually, just by chance, they would produce the complete works of
> Shakespeare.
> 
> Now that has always struck me as a cute idea, but not true, because I
> estimate the probability of turning out several thousand characters in
> a specific order is vanishingly small, and would therefore require
> more monkeys and typewriters than there are atoms in the universe. (I
> have not actually made that calculation, however.)
> 
> Of course there are other difficulties which make that project
> impossible anyway, such as the difficulty of getting the monkeys to
> cooperate, where to put all those typewriters, how to feed them all,
> and how to get rid of all the monkey poop. You would also have to have
> computers scanning all the output and comparing them with the known
> works of Shakespeare to see if they actually did it. Hence it has
> always been clear to me that this is just a fantasy.
> 
> But recently I had the thunderous realization that this experiment has
> already actually been performed! And what is more, the monkeys
> succeeded, eventually producing the complete works of Shakespeare!
> Furthermore, the typewriters were not even necessary. The monkeys fed
> themselves and took care of their own housekeeping. They mostly had
> fun performing this experiment, even though it took many millions of
> years. Their primary tools were their reproductive organs, which they
> generally enjoy using.
> 
> By now, dear reader, you have probably figured out that I'm referring
> to the process of evolution, acting on the primates of 100 million
> years ago. To call them monkeys is not exactly accurate; they were the
> precursors of today's apes, monkey, and humans. But one of their
> descendants, all by himself, produced the complete works of
> Shakespeare. He was, of course, William Shakespeare.
> 
> Soon afterwards, the same process produced the typewriter!

Dawkins has already used the monkey example to illustrate evolution in
"Climbing Mount Improbable", IIRC. His point was not exactly the same as
yours - he was showing that if you started off with monkey babble, but
then chose only those monkey passages that resembled Shakespeare (his
stand-in for selection), and  proceeded with additional random
variations on the Shakespearean-like passages, you could produce
Shakespeare (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) in a much shorter period
of time than with random monkeys. 

But actually a far more interesting take on this can be found in Daniel
Dennett's "Darwins Dangerous Idea", in the chapter that is a takeoff on
Borges conceit of the Library of Babel. This combines Borges' rather
mind-boggling conception of infinite infinitesimal variation on a
literary theme with the idea of how evolution can explore many
possibilities to arrive at masterpieces such as Shakespeare. Since you
seem to have independently realized several of these concepts (I myself
am good at realizing concepts - after others have pointed them out to
me), I think you might enjoy Dennett's take on them. 

Yours,

Bill Morse
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