Date: Mon, 09 Sep 2002 15:14:34 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: "Neal E. Westfall" <nwestfal@directvinternet.com> Cc: Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr>, Joshua Lee <yid@softhome.net>, dave@jetcafe.org, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Why did evolution fail? Message-ID: <3D7D1D4A.D8B25193@mindspring.com> References: <20020909133707.S1838-100000@Tolstoy.home.lan>
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"Neal E. Westfall" wrote: > > > So what is the criteria for determining "fitness"? Those who > > > survive? But then this just leads us into a logical tautology, > > > whereby the mechanism for evolution amounts to "the survival of > > > the survivors." > > > > "The survival of those best suited to survive", actually. > > It is still a triviality. Of course those "best suited to survive" will > survive. I never claimed it was profound, only that it worked... > I don't really have a problem with adaptation, per se when limited > to within species. What really strikes me as absurd though, is > the idea that chance mutations can give rise to new functionality, > for that functionality is not functional until everything is plugged > in and working. As long as it's not harmful, it's not selected against, and it hangs around. Alternately, there could be some other environmental pressure, which is not pervasive, but is instead periodic. The fact that viruses emerge in waves, rather than being a steady background noise, is indicative of this mechanism. > What possible purpose could a partially evolved > sex organ have, for instance? I think that you are begging the question; the survival value of gametogenesis is fairly indisputable. The real question is not gameteogenesis, per se, which could easily have occurred as a result of a mutation, but internalization of gametogenesis into the organism to such an extent that specialization of organs occurred. The second and third search results in the search reference I gave you go into this idea in more detail than I'm willing to go into myself, in this forum (the significance of the search was not my ability to do a search, it was in my selection of specific terms, and their ordering and grouping, to answer an earlier question of yours). > > The answer is that nature is not anthropomorphised (or personified) > > by having the power to select, so long as it does not exhibit will > > in the process. > > But does this not present a difficulty? With no will to do the > selecting, "the power to select" is completely unintelligible. You keep saying that it's unintelligible, but literally many thousands of scientists don't find it to be unintelligible. Why do you say that it's unintelligible? Why don't they say the same thing? The answer has to lie in the fact that you and they don't share some fundamental assumptions. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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