Does evolution have a purpose? (Evolution)

by David Turell , Saturday, October 11, 2014, 21:40 (3694 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Bacteria did fine almost from the word go, so what “drove” multicellularity? ..... 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-Exactly the type of point I am raising. We really don't know what drives evolution. Darwin chose survival, but his group cannot define fitness. It could well not be survival but constant invention with the non-fit dropping along the wayside. There is no question from the examples I've given in Natures wonders. that just not bring us to purpose. What I have just described is a shotgun approach. There could be a program to push toward humans. That is purpose, or the shotgun could imply the purpose of seeing just how inventive life can be if given free rein.-> dhw: 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.-That is my free rein description. In this case humans are here by accident, and the odds against this result are enormous. This is Gould's 'series of contingencies' and we are the lucky accident of fate, the Glorious Accident of the book title. But accidents against enormous odds occur all the time the math folks tell us.-Against this thinking is the series of events leading to us. A universe that is fine-tuned for life, 20 major and 100 minor physical parameters, often exact to thousands of decimal places to allow a life-giving universe. The appearance of life from organic chemistry that arises from a totally inorganic chemistry universe. 
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> dhw:There is no chance involved here, other than the randomness of environmental change.-We can't prove environmental challenges drive evolution. They tend to remove the unfit, but why should new animals appear as complex advancements. The bacteria are still here, no more complex than in the beginning.-> dhw: 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. -Planning new organisms is a complex problem, coordinating new organs, as in the Cambrian. A posible inventive mechanism went wild then. How? That gap seem too great to expect the simple multicellular two-tissue layered Ediacarans to conjure up such a jump. I use the word conjure in its magical sense. Magic or purpose?-> dhw: 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.-So, did the IM invent itself? Or again, no purpose? For me the evidence is strongly suggestive of purpose.