Balance of nature illustrated (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, February 26, 2015, 17:34 (3557 days ago) @ George Jelliss

GEORGE: This PDF is about the causal "forces" at work in evolution.
Natural selection versus Drift:-http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/3035/1/DriftPSApaperFinal.pdf
 
I thought it might fit into this thread, 
especially as dhw is on about "chance" again!-My references to chance in evolution have nothing to do with natural selection, and I suspect you have missed a lot of the discussion in which I have attempted to eliminate chance from the process. In brief, many of us have great difficulty accepting that random mutations (= chance) can produce the complex innovations which have led from single cell life to humans. Innovation is the problem - natural selection only ensures the survival of those innovations that are beneficial; it does not produce them. I have suggested that since we know organisms themselves are capable of changing their structures in order to adapt to changing conditions, it is possible that in the past, when conditions were very different, the same mechanism for adaptation enabled organisms to exploit the opportunities offered by new environments and to innovate. What Darwin attributed to chance would therefore have been the result of deliberate actions by organisms themselves.-I'm afraid I found the article very hard going, and gave up after a while. It didn't seem to be concerned with the problem of innovation anyway, and David's comment confirms my impression.