Beaver Shots: Life, the Universe, and Beaver Engineering.

            As you drive north on I-380 towards Waterloo, Iowa, when you reach the I-380, US 20 interchange,  if you look to the left just after you pass under the bridge you’ll see something fascinating.   Some enterprising beaver has dammed off the entrance to a culvert which is supposed to drain the road ditch.  This has created a shallow lake, and since the road ditches on both sides are connected by a culvert, this has backed up water on the other side of the road, where said beaver has built a fine lodge.  This is in a small triangular area, about a half block on a side, where the DOT has planted trees.  And the beaver is chopping them down. 

            But his choice of site is unfortunate.  Assuming that the road dept does not rip out his dam and trap him before he kills the rest of the trees, the site is still doomed.  The only water fed into this area is the runoff from the triangular plot itself, and there is no rain in winter. With no source of year-round fresh water, this shallow lake will surely freeze to the bottom.  Not good news for a beaver.  Today, he is probably a very happy little beaver.  But before next spring he will be a very dead little beaver unless he can manage to beave somewhere else.

            At one point in the Nineteenth Century, science took a sudden interest in beavers.  Engineers in particular were impressed by the fact that beaver dams are always placed in exactly the right position and use an economy of materials.   Many scientists felt that such exquisite engineering indicated that beavers possessed some kind of conscious intelligence.  But recently it has become known that beavers are creatures of instinct, and a very simple instinct.  They are guided by one simple algorithm: to listen for the sound of running water-- and to pat mud and sticks on it until it stops running.  That’s it!    Such behavior will not only repair existing dams, but construct new ones.  Thus dies the notion of the wise and thoughtful beaver.

            I think this may be a useful metaphor for the universe in general.  Among my close friends are persons of a wide range of philosophical persuasions, from traditional Christians, to Atheists, Agnostics, Pagans, Animists, Deists, and just people who use the word “God” to mean the forces of the natural world.  Personally, I am more comfortable as a Deist, (a person who says that,  “Yes, there is a God—and he created the universe,  and wound it up like an alarm clock and tossed it out into space—and hasn’t been seen since.”)   The first five presidents of the United States all claimed to be Deists.   But whatever our philosophy, when discussing the cosmos and its origin we find ourselves using metaphors like “Grand Designer,” or “Watchmaker,” or Engineer.  I think all of these are poor metaphors because they all imply a conscious intentionality.  “Big Beaver” might be a better term.   Just as the beaver’s elegant works are all the result of a simple algorithm, I suspect that the present universe is simply the result of a small number of very basic rules—rules at the particle level—for how mater and energy interact.  And from these rules the cosmos has organized itself into atoms, molecules, stars, planets, life forms—and us.