John W. Kulig wrote:
> are more frequent in subsequent generations. The "random"
> part of Darwinian theory has always been under-appreciated. The fact that
the
> variation is random means there is/was no plan to evolution, no teleology,
no
> foresight - just design shaped by selection.
Agreed, but I might amend that to say that the "random" part of
Darwinian theory has been typically misplaced, not simply underappreciated.
Randomness applies to the variation part of evolution, but probably the most
common strawman argument against evolution is the one that holds that the
entire process is random, and fails to note the decidedly nonrandom (though
still nonintentional) nature of the selection side of the process. In my
experience, it has seemed that the problem is not a lack of attention to the
randomness involved in evolution, but rather a failure to separate the
concepts of variation and selection (something that Skinner does an
excellent job of in several articles, if I remember correctly).
Paul Smith
Alverno College
Milwaukee
