causation (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, June 08, 2014, 16:12 (3821 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: ... These are the mechanisms that enable individual organisms to adapt and innovate.
> 
> The only split I'm making is between the origin of the mechanisms for adaptation and innovation, and the manner in which evolution proceeded. ......Since you have tactfully omitted it, let me repeat the seminal moment in your discussion with Romansh:
> 
> ROMANSH: ...evolution is guided by the environment a living creature finds itself. So in that sense it is guided.
> DAVID: Have you followed the epigenetic mechanisms in which the organism seems to mimic Lamark? And guides its own destiny?
> 
> You said it: the organism guides its own destiny. I repeat: Hallelujah!-Of course those controls exist, but I ask you again, is it likely they developed through a chance evolutionary process or were they there from the start? I don't accept that such mechanisms are self-developed. Their presence makes for enormous genomic complexity, beyond Darwin's own imagination, far beyond the possibility it all developed by chance with no purpose.