Biological complexity: homeostasis (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, October 29, 2018, 12:10 (2003 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: I propose that evolution advances not through planning for a future which organisms know nothing about, but through their responses to the requirements and opportunities that arise out of the changing conditions in which they live at the time.

DAVID: I glad we agree that one form of intelligence can foresee the future and design for it. What I have bolded is the worn out Darwinian tiny-step-by-tiny-step approach you have given which ignores every gap we see in evolution. Gaps imply only design works. Darwin wisely recognized the problem and got around the point by assuming the gaps would be filled. They haven't and have become worse than he imagined.

Now that you have withdrawn your absurdly limited definition of intelligence, you revert to the dead horse flogging of Darwin’s gradualism, which I have already rejected a hundred times. You accept Darwin’s theory of common descent, but want to fill the gaps by means of a 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme or a divine dabble for every single innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder, with even the dabbles performed in anticipation of environmental changes, i.e. before they are needed. And all for the sake of the human brain. I suggest that the gaps may be filled by the intelligence of those organisms which can adapt to or exploit the changes as they arise. I acknowledge that like your own proposal, this is an unproven hypothesis.