Evolution: a different view (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, April 21, 2016, 14:11 (3137 days ago) @ David Turell

http://nautil.us/issue/20/creativity/the-strange-inevitability-of-evolution - QUOTES: "You don't have to be a benighted creationist, nor even a believer in divine providence, to argue that Darwin's astonishing theory doesn't fully explain why nature is so marvelously, endlessly inventive.
But the biggest mystery about evolution eluded his theory. And he couldn't even get close to solving it.”
"What Wagner is talking about is how evolution innovates: as he puts it, “how the living world creates.”
"These ideas suggest that evolvability and openness to innovation are features not just of life but of information itself....Manfred Eigen, who insists that Darwinian evolution is not merely the organizing principle of biology but a “law of physics,” an inevitable result of how information is organized in complex systems. And if that's right, it would seem that the appearance of life was not a fantastic fluke but almost a mathematical inevitability." - David's comment: Huge essay. I covered only a little. Why inevitability? - Thank you for giving us this taster. We have been arguing the toss over the problem of innovation for the last eight years! I just don't have time to read the whole essay now, so what I am about to say may be unfair, in which case I apologize in advance. Firstly, there are two mysteries here, and they seem to have been telescoped: innovation is one, and the appearance of life is another. I can think of no reason why life should not appear without evolving, as it apparently did for millions of years here on Earth. Evolution requires favourable, changing conditions and a mechanism that enables an inventive response to those conditions. Secondly, the suggestion that the mechanisms for life and evolution were the inevitable result of a “law of physics” seems to me to be a cop-out on a par with “God did it”. If Wagner can tell us exactly how life began, and exactly how a law of physics can “inevitably” transform comparatively primitive, single-celled organisms into dinosaurs, dogs, humming birds and humans, he might have a case. But I repeat my apologies, as these comments are only based on the quotes.