Princeton Scientists Discover Proteins That Control Evolution

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by caspofungin

no, evolution is a random process. in a group of organisms, there will be some with various mutations. some of these mutations incur a survival benefit -- those particular mutations increase in the population as a result of that survival benefit, and eventually the entire species consists of organisms with that mutation. there is no "intent," no "meaning."

Well, random mutation is a tool of it, and I agree on the importance of mutations. There maybe is no linearity in mutations that add and delete features to an existing design. However, it is our assumption, usually, that we associate with the term evolution, that there is a direction, defined by the improvement of a design that makes it fitter. But that is already our interpretation. Like the time arrow in Western tradition that we assume to point from the past to the future, and on its travel spends a certain quantity of "time" to move "forward" in time, never backward. That is why the thought is widespread in public that at a given time you always have just the linear endproducts of all developement projects of evolution living on the planet, and these alwass being the best designs reached so far. that indeed several different loose ends from different developement strains and different ages and phases and earlier designs live parrallel to each other (For example homo sapiens, crocodiles, sharks, dolphins and cockroaches), is not so clear in wide public understanding. We assume also that random mutations help to find helpful design features that then get added to the genpool, in that randomness helps a directed evolution that moves towards "improvement" or better "fitness" of a species. However, here you have the difference between the meta-term "evolution" and our interpretation of that it has a directed "intention", and the tool by which this concept is being realised: random mutation for example. What the public often oversees is that random mutations also can lead to the deletion to useful features, which is against greater fitness, and then there are those features that are improvement and disadvanatge at the same time: like sichel-cell anaemia being harmful to your health, but also protecting against Malaria, for example (I hope I do not mistake this example here). As a meta-term, the term evolution is free for interpretation, it is above the level were you classify tools of evolution, and interpretations of meanings or goals of evolution. the tools you observe in action, the meaning you interpret into it, but if it make sense to speak of a meta-concept of that there is an evolutionb (of whatevcer a kind) taking place, is hypothetical only, and cannot directly be tested. Even creationists accept an evolution happening: a change of species (or extinction of) and the world that is God-wanted and God-intended and God-planned, or more subtle: the mechanism of random mutation is being used by God to acchieve the design changes that He desires: randomness understood as a divine intention. So, both a Darwinian scientist and a creationist may use the term evolution, but both mean totally different things by it. Both cannot observe the reality of their concepts directly: that evolution may have a self-emerging organisation (or not), that it may have better survival chances by better fitness as a goal (Darwin's special theory of evolution), that it may have God's intention as a goal - or that it may have no goal at all, but is just a word with 9 letters, and beyond that: reality is just what it is, without caring for what man thinks about it.