In Probability’s Nature and the Nature of Probability, Don Johnson discusses the trilobite eye:
Physicist Riccardo Levi-Setti observes, “In fact, this optical doublet is a device so typically associated with human invention that its discovery in trilobites comes as something of a shock. The realization that trilobites developed and used such devices half a billion years ago makes the shock even greater. ”
The trilobite lens is particularly intriguing since the only other animal to use inorganic focusing material is man. The lens my be classified as a prosthetic device since it was non-biological, which also means the lens itself (with no DNA) was not suvbject to Darwinian evolution. The manufacturing andcntrolling of the lenses were obviously biological processes, with an unknown number of DNA-produced proteins for collecting and processing the raw materials to manufacture the precision lenses and create the refracting interface between the two lenses.
The lenses do not decompose as any other animal’s lenses would, so they are subject to rigorous scientific investigation and determination of optical properties based on the actual lenses, from which infernces can be made as to their use.
(p. 64-65)
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