Does evolution have a purpose? (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, October 11, 2014, 13:04 (3694 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: That is just my point. Who knows God at all?-dhw: Indeed. He may not even exist. But you think he does, so do you still believe his purpose in starting evolution was to create humans?-DAVID: I always ask the question of myself. Why are we here? The apes, whose lifestyle we left, did fine until the last 100 years when we become too numerous for them and began to encroach on their habitat. Nothing drove our brain size. It just happened. Upright posture began to develop 22 million years ago in a monkey. Why? It appears to me evolution was directed toward humans. Our bodies and brains have exceeded all requirements of nature at the time we began to appear. It is still recognizing purpose or appeallng to chance to do these things. Darwin bet on chance. I don't.-You might ask the same question of every single species. Bacteria did fine almost from the word go, so what “drove” multicellularity? Why is our friend the myrmecophilous beetle here, and why was the tyrannosaurus rex here, though he isn't here any more? Your sometimes breathtaking list of Nature's Wonders raises the same question over and over again, and it's possible that the hypothesis of an autonomous inventive mechanism provides us with the answer. All of these wonders, including the human body and brain, “exceed all requirements of nature”, since nature “requires” nothing beyond bacteria. Perhaps the power of invention has led to this vast variety, and we are a kind of culmination. Other species have their own degrees of intelligence and consciousness and even ratiocination, and at some time the inventive mechanism within a few monkeys hit on a new idea (maybe descending from the trees) - possibly triggered by a change in the environment - which in turn led to a whole succession of new ideas. Of course it's all maybe and possibly, but as you have repeatedly pointed out, the brain develops with use. New experiences create new links. I am suggesting that there is no overriding purpose, but that once set in motion, the inventive mechanisms within individual organisms or groups of organisms pursued their own “agendas”, thus giving rise to the great higgledy-piggledy bush of species that eventually led to our own.
 
There is no chance involved here, other than the randomness of environmental change. Each branch of the bush is the result of deliberate design - not separately by a god but separately by succeeding generations of organisms whose inventive mechanisms adjust to or exploit environmental change. You are right to say Darwin bet on chance, but only in the sense of random mutations. As far as the origin of life was concerned, he hedged his bets. If he had known what we now know about genetics, he might also have come up with the hypothesis of an inventive mechanism, and would no doubt have hedged his bets on the origin of that too.