The opposite is closer to the mark: NS predicts that functional features of organisms will be more on the lines of "good enough" for their environment, with constraints applied by the natural history of the particular organism.
Quite true. Just about all the university-level books I own (as opposed to the 'pop science ones
) -- things like Bob Carroll's
Patterns and Processes, Gilbert's
Developmental Biology, Futuyma's
Evolutionary Biology, etc -- frequently stress the historical constraint aspect of 'design'. Natural selection does not predict perfection -- as if we might know what that might be! -- though we should not be surprised if it does produce very good 'designs'. All it does predict is 'good enough', because (1) of contingency, the history of the lineage, nothing is starting from scratch; and (2) because that's all anything needs to be: better than its current rivals. It's the old thing about the two blokes pursued by a bear; one stops to pull on his running shoes, and when the other asks why, they won't help him outrun the bear, he says 'no, but they'll help me outrun
you.
IOW, there are more examples of sloppy design, cooption, or making do than there are of engineering.
Well, I'm not sure there are
more examples, but there are
more than enough to show that the designer, if there were one, was anything but intelligent.
TTFN, DT (Oolon)
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