Natures wonders: zebrafish 360 degree vision (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, June 24, 2018, 19:07 (2342 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: If zebrafish needed this type of vision to survive (Darwin style) why shouldn't they have been designed this way when they first appeared?

dhw: Why do you always slink back to Darwin when you know perfectly well that I regard evolutionary advances as being geared to survival and/or improvement! If a new type of eye gives an organism an advantage (improvement), the innovation will become permanent. That is why I always specify as above that cell communities respond to the needs (= survival) or opportunities (= improvement) arising out of environmental conditions. If improvement was not part of the formula, we would have stuck at bacterial level.

DAVID: Your insistence on the theory of survival is the competition Darwin's theory required. Your thinking is still primarily Darwinist.

dhw: It doesn’t matter two hoots whether my thinking is Darwinist or not! You make it sound as if the very word is a guarantee of wrongness! You asked why this type of vision didn’t appear straight away if it was needed for survival. My answer is that it wasn’t NEEDED for survival, but was an improvement on earlier forms of vision, and so no doubt IMPROVED the zebrafish’s chances of survival. Do you really think survival and improvement play no role in evolution? And in passing, what is your theory? Why didn’t your God design this type of vision when the zebrafish first appeared?

I think they were designed this way from their beginning. I still don't buy that survival of the fittest drives evolution. but I agree with you that your 'improvement' or my 'complexity' are the driving forces that took evolution past bacteria.