This isn't my field of expertise, so feel free to educate me, but surely the basic evolutionary mechanism boils down to how successful random mutations are, so is chance-based? What other determinant is there?
Robert is not wrong but the nature of the randomness in the small mutations (most of which are neutral, some malign, some benign) is not the driving force of evolution - (natural) selection is, and this is anything but random chance.
The mutations (which in many ways are not random) provide "evolution" with the ability to select which is NON-random. And the mutations are very minor compared to the parent organism.
No evolutionary biologist would ever say that we humans (or any other creature) "evolved by chance". It could never be so. Evolution would come crashing down if it were a theory of chance and its power is indeed in the explanation of how complexity arises from non-complexity without recourse to chance.
Whereas the cartoon is funny, it is also funny for its misrepresentation of evolution which is often promulgated in this way.
6 comments:
ha ha - that one's real good!
Yeah, I wish I'd made it. :)
But the picture just fell into my hands, by pure chance.
Of course, no evolutionary biologist would ever maintain that a complex biological form "evolved by chance".
This isn't my field of expertise, so feel free to educate me, but surely the basic evolutionary mechanism boils down to how successful random mutations are, so is chance-based? What other determinant is there?
Robert is not wrong but the nature of the randomness in the small mutations (most of which are neutral, some malign, some benign) is not the driving force of evolution - (natural) selection is, and this is anything but random chance.
The mutations (which in many ways are not random) provide "evolution" with the ability to select which is NON-random. And the mutations are very minor compared to the parent organism.
No evolutionary biologist would ever say that we humans (or any other creature) "evolved by chance". It could never be so. Evolution would come crashing down if it were a theory of chance and its power is indeed in the explanation of how complexity arises from non-complexity without recourse to chance.
Whereas the cartoon is funny, it is also funny for its misrepresentation of evolution which is often promulgated in this way.
Fair point. It's lucky we have such useful laws. ;)
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