utations are guided, simply not by an intelligent external actor. Mutations are dependent on the laws of chemistry - genes don't just randomly self-assemble in totally random patterns from a random soup of base elements (even a totally random soup of base elements would still react in predictable ways; |
I don't think it is helpful to use the term "guided" in this way. It is true that there are physical/chemical limits on the mutations that can occur, but that is not the same as guiding. Calling these limitations guidance simply plays into other goofy speculations in an unnecessary way.
Further, I don't see any sense in which we ought to say that natural selection guides mutation. Selection determines the distribution of variation in a population, but the mutations themselves are occur randomly with respect to fitness.
Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead. William Lloyd Garrison