Eric Cassell

Eric Cassell has a Bachelor’s degree in Biology (B.S. Biology, George Mason University), a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering (B.E.E., Villanova University), and a Master’s degree (M.A. Science and Religion, Biola University), which included the study of philosophy of science, the history of the relationship between science and religion, and various views of design in cosmology and biology. He has been an engineering consultant for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), with over forty years of experience in various aspects of systems engineering related to aircraft navigation, air traffic control surveillance, and safety systems. He is a technical expert in various aspects of the Global Positioning System. His experience also includes the development of several computer models of engineering systems. This included modeling aspects of human behavior (aircraft pilots and air traffic controllers). He has also authored over 30 published technical papers, as well as numerous other technical reports. He has had a long-term interest in various aspects of animal behavior and is the author of Animal Algorithms: Evolution and the Mysterious Origin of Ingenious Instincts. His work experience enables him to bring a unique perspective to analyzing aspects of animal behavior that appear to be the result of engineering design.

Archives

Design, Engineering, Specified Complexity: Appreciating the Fruit Fly Brain

_{Eric Cassell
November 14, 2024}

Groundbreaking new research has documented the complexity and design of the brains of fruit flies.

Study Unravels the Mystery of Fish Hearing

_{Eric Cassell
July 31, 2024}

The fish directional hearing algorithm appears to be another example of a complex programmed behavior in animals.

Being a Bat: Some Scientists Push Animal Consciousness

_{Eric Cassell
May 2, 2024}

A group of scientists and philosophers have published a declaration that there is evidence that a wide range of animals exhibit signs of consciousness.

New Study Reveals Secrets of Honey Bee Waggle Dance

_{Eric Cassell
April 16, 2024}

There are several factors that make detecting direction challenging for the observing bees. One is that the dances take place inside a dark hive.

In Bats and Other Animals, Evidence of Common Design in a Magnetic Compass

_{Eric Cassell
January 15, 2024}

There has been little data previously to confirm that mammals navigate long distances using the earth’s geomagnetic field.

Can Algorithms Designed by Humans Catch Up with the Genius of Biological Systems?

_{Eric Cassell
August 1, 2023}

While humans invented algorithms only within the last century, enabling the development of AI, animals exhibit behavioral algorithms that long predate humans.

The Role of Learning in the Honey Bee Waggle Dance

_{Eric Cassell
March 20, 2023}

Learning is largely a programmed behavior, governed by a type of algorithm, particularly for animals with limited cognitive ability.

Intelligent Design in Animal Self-Location and Navigation

_{Eric Cassell
January 18, 2023}

A question is whether such mechanisms exist in more ancient brain regions of other animals. A new study has identified a self-location mechanism in zebrafish.

Evolution Challenge: The Harvester Ant Foraging Algorithm

_{Eric Cassell
July 6, 2022}

On this ID the Future, Animal Algorithms author Eric Cassell explores an algorithm in the brains of harvester ants that adjusts their foraging strategy based on how available food is in their environment, thereby guiding the harvester ants toward more efficient foraging. Cassell builds off a March 2022 article in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface to explain how the algorithm in the ant’s tiny brain involves a sophisticated feedback control mechanism that includes both positive and negative feedback systems. As he further notes in the episode and in an article at Evolution News, a mathematical model of the harvester ants’ foraging behavior by Stanford University scientists confirms the control algorithm is largely optimized. Cassell’s recent book, Animal Algorithms, …

Animal Algorithms: Ant Foraging Is a “Rational” Behavior

_{Eric Cassell
June 1, 2022}

Of course, ants and other animals do not make decisions in a “conscious” manner as humans would. Instead they rely on algorithms.

Hank Hanegraaff and Animal Algorithms Author Eric Cassell, Pt. 2

_{Eric Cassell
April 18, 2022}

On today’s ID the Future, radio host Hank Hanegraaff continues his conversation with Animal Algorithms author Eric Cassell. Here they look at more insects with strikingly sophisticated innate behavior, suggesting intricate algorithms encoded into their brains from birth, all of which cannot be effectively explained by reference to Darwinian evolution. Cassell and Hanegraaff touch on wasp martial arts; termite altruism and termite architectural skills, including a cooling system that has inspired a human design; interdependent social caste systems that enhance fitness; and spiderweb architecture and the extraordinary properties of spider silk, including the different kinds of silk and the spider’s ability to employ different types precisely tailored for different needs. Cassell looks …

Hank Hanegraaff Interviews Animal Algorithms Author Eric Cassell, Pt. 1

_{Eric Cassell
April 13, 2022}

On this ID the Future radio host Hank Hanegraaff interviews Animal Algorithms author Eric Cassell about insects and other small-brained animals with innate behaviors of astonishing sophistication — desert ants, leafcutter ants, honey bees, spiders, monarch butterflies, and many more. These appear to be hard-wired from birth with complex algorithms coded into their neural networks, and some of the algorithms seem to involve complex mathematics. Also mysterious: many of these innate abilities are do or die. So how could they have blindly evolved one small Darwinian step at a time? Also, how would genetic mutations generate the ability to make navigational calculations (as in the case of some birds) that for humans require spherical geometry? Listen in to learn more about this and other …

To Regulate Foraging, Harvester Ants Use a (Designed) Feedback Control Algorithm

_{Eric Cassell
April 7, 2022}

These elements of harvester ant behavior present a severe challenge for the evolutionary paradigm.

Animal Algorithms Webinar Pt. 2: Author Q&A

_{Eric Cassell
December 22, 2021}

Today’s ID the Future is Part 2 of a recent live webinar with Eric Cassell fielding questions about his new book, Animal Algorithms: Evolution and the Mysterious Origin of Ingenious Instincts. He and host Casey Luskin explore the engineering wonders of web-spinning spiders and their extraordinary silk, and the challenge of transforming solitary insects into social insects (with their complex and interdependent caste systems) via a blind step-by-step evolutionary process, and the many thousands of genetic changes required. What does Cassell consider the best explanation? He invokes design theorist William Dembski’s work with No Free Lunch theorems to argue that blind processes are a no-go for explaining their origin. From there Luskin opens the webinar up to questions from the live …

Animal Algorithms Webinar: Desert Ants and Honey Bees

_{Eric Cassell
December 20, 2021}

Today’s ID the Future brings listeners the first half of a recent live webinar featuring author Eric Cassell fielding questions about his intelligent design book, Animal Algorithms: Evolution and the Mysterious Origin of Ingenious Instincts. Center for Science and Culture associate director Casey Luskin hosts. They begin the webinar discussing Cassell’s unique set of qualifications for writing the book, and then they move into a conversation about the amazing desert ant, a master navigator from birth, able to integrate multiple navigation sensors despite having an incredibly tiny brain. Cassell argues that these innate skills point to algorithms programmed into the ant’s brain and genome, and that such programming is far better explained by intelligent design than by any blind …

Complex Programmed Behaviors — Intelligently Designed

_{Eric Cassell
December 16, 2021}

Some discriminators don’t get us very far in deciding which is the better explanation between blind evolution and intelligent design.

The Miracle of Spiderwebs

_{Eric Cassell
December 7, 2021}

Spiders are another of nature’s master engineers. About half of known spider species (order Araneae) construct webs made of silk.

Ants Do Trigonometry: A Problem for Darwinism

_{Eric Cassell
November 30, 2021}

How can a trigonometric mathematical computation be programmed into the brain of an ant through a neo-Darwinian process of genetic mutation and natural selection?

For Evolution, Monarch Butterfly Migration Is a Mystery

_{Eric Cassell
November 22, 2021}

It typically takes up to three generations of butterflies to make the complete journey. This means that the navigation information is genetically programmed.

Convergent Animal Algorithms Challenge Darwinism

_{Eric Cassell
November 17, 2021}

Today’s ID the Future again spotlights the new book Animal Algorithms: Evolution and the Mysterious Origin of Ingenious Instincts. Host and Baylor University computer engineering professor Robert J. Marks talks with Animal Algorithms author Eric Cassell about the sophisticated algorithms that appear to be embedded in the brains of colony insects, granting them impressive instinctive abilities. Could these complex programmed behaviors have evolved through a blind Darwinian process? Cassell and Marks discuss the challenges to that idea, beginning with the fact that in our ordinary experience, when random changes are made to a computer algorithm, it inevitably degrades function rather than enhancing it. Digging deeper, they discuss the No Free Lunch theorems of William Macready and …