ABSTRACT
Richard Dawkins' use of the word 'biomorph' deserves even closer scrutiny. For Dawkins' model to carry any real conviction, even as a mechanism for 'evolving' an endless variety of geometric forms, he must be able to produce his biomorphs beginning only with completely material, impersonal mechanisms compounded with the chaotic action of brute chance. Dawkins could of course draw a much more modest conclusion from his biomorph analogy. Dawkins' main point is that as the generations pass, the total amount of genetic difference between a particular 'offspring' and its original 'ancestor' can become extremely large. In other words Dawkins requires a carefully structured, non-random, highly sophisticated and intelligently constructed environment in which to produce his biomorphs. Dawkins' program produces pictures of anything and everything, living and non-living—a huge variety of recognisable shapes, merely crude and simplistic symbols of reality, but nothing more.
