I know buz has been permanently shown the door, but I felt the need to correct a misapprehension in this post, in case anyone was looking.
buz writes:
In the book, "What Evolution Is", Ernst Mayr says evolution is chaotic chancy events that, in time produce diverse species fitted for their environment.
Mayr says evolution isultimately happens by chance/randomness, and that there are many unpredictable factors in alleged NS. Alleged NS, for example, is subject to environmental conditions which come about by chance and randomness.
Alleged natural selection would be better described as natural variation, in that the results should naturally more likely lead to chaos than order from what is observed in the real here and now world. ref: Mayr, 2001, p.229
Mayr says no such thing. Quoting from the relevant portions of the book buz referenced:
quote:
Unfortunately, some of the strict adaptationists forgot that natural selection is a two-step process. To be sure, selection for adaptedness is paramount at the second step, but this is preceeded by a first step - the production of the variation that provides the material for the selection process, and here stochastic processes (chance, contingency) are dominant. (pg 228)
and
quote:
One can conclude from these observations that evolution is neither merely a series of accidents nor a deterministic movement toward ever more perfect adaptation. To be sure, evolution is in part an adaptive process, because natural selection operates in every generation. The principle of adaptationism has been adopted so widely by Darwinians because it is such a heuristic methodology. To question what the adaptive properties might be for every attribute of an organism leads almost inevitably to a deeper understanding. However, every attribute is ultimately the product of variation, and this variation is largely a product of chances. Many authors seem to have a problem in comprehending the citurally simultaneous actions of two seemingly opposing causations, chance and necessity. But this is precisely the pwer of the Darwinian process. (page 229)
Mayr doesn't talk about chaos or anything else. He is emphasizing the importance of BOTH elements of RM/NS - the random/contingent and the deterministic/necessary. I'm not sure where buz got his information, but it wasn't from Mayr.
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