What is design, if not a process of evolution that is rehearsed internally in a kind of simulation of alternative choices, rather than testing out all those alternative choices - at higher cost and risk - in the real world? By developing the faculty to model external reality internally in the mind, humans are able to run emulations of an iterative and evolutionary process. This faculty provides an evolutionary advantage over the more costly trial-and-error process conducted in the real world. It would seem reasonable to suggest that all animals that have a brain - no matter how small - likely have this faculty of internalized rehearsal prior to real world enactment.

Therefore, design is still by its nature an evolutionary process, even if that process happens to play out internally.

Now, what if even the universe we experience around us and consider to be "real world" is merely itself an emulation that is acting as a preparation for a fuller reality? And what if even that fuller reality is itself no more than an emulation in preparation for an even fuller reality? Is there any reason, then, to believe that there aren't infinite levels of encapsulation like this? Emulations within emulations within emulations, etc.?

What does it mean that the emulation of an external reality within the mind of a member of that reality is achieved using the very substance of that same reality? In other words, the less complete model of reality is also contained as part of that reality. This is a kind of recursion, or internal reflection of the external reality. The mind becomes like a kind of mirror, but more like one of those crazy carnival mirrors - a mirror that distorts the external reality by exaggerating elements of that reality that are of most interest to the individual.

The individual has certain interests or agendas within its environment. To support those interests, senses develop and evolve to support capturing information about the external environment that can form the basis of internal simulations. The combination of the individual's interests and its limited ability to sense its environment acts as a filter on the external reality, helping also to make it feasible to conduct internal simulations within the limitations of the brain's capabilities. The internal model, then, is a filtered reflection of the external reality. One can reasonably make the argument that the internal model is the very basis of an individual's experience of its existence. Hence, an individual's experience of its reality is necessarily grossly distorted and inaccurate.

One could go as far as to suggest that internal modelling can be considered as no more than a reflective phenomenon that is both a likely and inevitable occurrence in the universe.

Creationism has more recently become reinvented as "Intelligent Design". What if the evolutionary process - of which we are a part - is, after all, a process of design that is still underway? Is this possibly where evolution and intelligent design are finally reconciled? Design is, by its nature, an iterative process which involves the consideration, testing, and debunking of many non-viable candidate embodiments. Is this not the very same process being conducted by evolution?

A holistic view of the evolutionary system may permit the consideration of a collective or system level intelligence governing the choices. After all, where does one draw the boundary between chance and intent, anyway? And who presumes to be qualified to draw such a boundary? Contemplating the possibility of an intent or will underlying the process of evolution may force both creationists and evolutionists to make massive compromises in their positions: evolutionists would have to digest the notion of the existence of a higher intelligence, and creationists would have to digest a radically transformed notion of what the nature of this higher intelligence (their "god") is.

Further understanding of human cognitive processes may determine that thoughts evolve and iterate constantly within the neural network of our brains, and that our own individual intelligence is, after all, predicated on evolutionary principles and may, in fact, be essentially an internalization of such principles.