Randman writes:
For example, assuming for the moment that common descent (evolution) occurred, it would have to occur within the boundaries of very well-defined principles, such as "the laws" or rather principles of physics and chemistry. That alone is a tremendous amount of direction right there.
What is meant is clearly 'directionless with respect to ...', where what it is with respect to is any of a variety of things such as genetic complexity, morphological complexity, genomic size, morphological size, intelligence etc... except in as far as those various factors impact on fitness. And the impact those factors have on fitness is going to change with the specific environment.
So while in a highly specific environment some specific phenotype may be favoured, i.e. antibiotic resistance, there may be other environments where that specific phenotype is detrimental to fitness. So in general there is no direction to evolve antibiotic resistance, merely towards an overall increase in fitness with respect to the environment.
In terms of mutation itself the majority of mutations are also neutral with respect to fitness. There may be systems for promoting varation around specific loci, but they are the exception rather than the rule.
Can you tell us exactly what direction the principles of chemistry and physics are moving things towards in terms of life on Earth? The most obvious answer is eventual extinction but can you make any specifc short term predictions based on chemistry and physics?
TTFN,
WK
This message has been edited by Wounded King, 24-Jan-2006 09:46 PM
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