Re: Dawkins gives incorrect answer
From: Tim Tyler (tim_at_tt1lock.org)
Date: 08/19/04
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Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 15:39:22 +0000 (UTC)
TomHendricks474 <tomhendricks474@cs.com> wrote or quoted me saying:
> << However, the *main* role
> in evolution - as far as making changes
> to the information content of genomes goes
> has simply *got* to be given to random events. >>
>
> How can that be when all life adaptation is to a NON random environment/ heat
> cycle.
The environment has substantial random elements - or at least elements
that are effectively beyond the scope of prediction by individual agents -
which can be modelled as random for all intents and purposes.
This is part of physics - *even* if we knew the rules of the universe,
there's "the heisenberg uncertainty principle" - that prevents agents
from getting complete knowledge about the state of the universe - and
"chaos" - which magnifies tiny fluctuations on low levels up to
macroscopic scales.
Of course the universe has some predictable elemenets - but it is also
full of unpredictable ones.
> How does it maintain random events and adapt to a non random world at
> the same time?
There is no contradiction - the world contains both predictable and
unpredictable elements. Organisms also contain both predictable and
unpredictable elements.
> Can it continue to be random through 4 billion years of adapting to a NON
> random environment?
Yes - and has done so. "Non-random" is not a synonym for "contains no
random elements". The universe has predictable elements - but also
unpredictable ones - events that the laws of physics say that no
embedded observer can reliably predict.
Substantial elements of morphology are effectively down to chance.
Quite often, whenever you see a chiral object, there's a good chance that
the origin of the chirality is down to a chance historical event -
resulting in a genetic change which has subsequently reached fixation -
and is subsequently preserved by selection.
Sexual selection is a significant source of chance events. It is
based on female preferences - and while sometimes these make good
sense at other times they are whims - and whatever females find
attractive, other females had better follow suite - if they want
their sons to have any kids in the face of female choice.
If natural selection ruled, we would most likely have our retinas
attached the right way around, and our food would not ever go down
into our lungs, and nobody would ever have a coronary. Other
forces are at work - and a major such force is chance - which
controls the raw material natural selection has to work from.
-- __________ |im |yler http://timtyler.org/ tim@tt1lock.org Remove lock to reply.
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