about how evolution works; with no challenge (Evolution)

by David Turell , Saturday, November 21, 2015, 16:01 (3288 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Based on your worry about an IM with guidelines, I went back to this entry. What occurred to my was the obvious appearance of organisms changing their phenotype for no apparent reason. How many species modify and there are no environmental challenges? I think humans are one prime example. What I am claiming is that it is obvious some changes and advances are not due to stress, but simple innovation. The whale series is another example. The changes only served to complicate the physiology of the animals as they progressed from land animals to sea-dwelling whales. Natural selection played a role but initial stress didn't as far as can be told.
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> dhw: You have missed out the argument that I have put forward throughout this thread: namely, that what you call stress or environmental challenge leads to adaptation, but environmental change also offers opportunity for what I call IMPROVEMENT, and it is improvement that advances evolution. That is why I keep quoting the image of the fish leaving water when suddenly confronted by dry land. The land animal that entered the water reverses my example. My whole argument is based on the claim that innovation is not required but is the result of intelligent organisms exploiting new (for them) conditions in order to better themselves. But it is also possible that an especially intelligent “mind” will think of a new way of doing things - as in many of the natural wonders you present to us. That would be a different type of innovation, but the principle remains the same: intelligent organisms are inventive.-Now you propose that organisms have an innate will to better themselves. You have talked your way around my proposal that improvements can and do appear with no stress at all. The whale series created more physiologic stress by attempting to enter the water than maintaining the status it had. And there are many examples of stasis for 350 million years or more. So some are dangerously inventive and some are not? Why would a fish struggle to get up on land? My solution to your proposal is a God-given drive to complexity, because the lifestyles we know developed required intense planning to accomplish them. Again eight distinct very different species from land animal to whale with no intermediates to fill the large gaps in phenotype.