Dear Darwin - Episode 4

Five leading scientists address letters to Charles Darwin, expressing their thoughts on his work and legacy. Dr Peter Bentley, who works at the cutting edge of digital biology, tells Darwin about the emerging field of evolutionary computing. Peter tells of how Darwin's elegantly simple algorithm lies at the heart of so much complexity in our world, and how abstracting it from 'wet' biology and into the digital realm allows this most powerful of natural processes to be harnessed in industry, finance, medicine and even one day perhaps to construct true artificial life; self replicating, self-designing, self-adapting, self-repairing, self-everything devices.