Tim Tyler  wrote in
news:c7172j$1ft3$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org: 

> Guy Hoelzer  wrote or quoted:
>> in article c6tqgd$dmi$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org, Tim Tyler at
>> tim{at}tt1lock.org 
 
>> > Natural selection may get the final say - but the generation of
>> > variation /often/ involves alternatives that can be easily
>> > produced. 
 
>> > It may be quite reasonable to say that a branching tree was one of
>> > the early variations formed - because there was a short sequence of
>> > developmental instructions that led to it and the sequence could
>> > easily be reached by mutation.
 
>> > The idea that simple instruction sequences produce apparently-
>> > complex, patterened and purposeful-looking results is well known
>> > to those interested in fractals and cellular automata.
 
>> I agree with all of this, and I fail to see how it is in conflict
>> even with "panadaptationism."
 
> The characature of a panadaptationist will tend to look at the
> order created by a self-organising system and tend to invent
> adaptive explanations for the existence of that order.
 
> E.g. rather than answering the question of why legs of a centipede
> are all the same by invoking the fact that they are all generated
> by the same small simple program, the panadaptationist will tend
> to suggest that centipede legs are all the same so that each leg
> fits in exactly with the stride of the leg in front of it - and
> no toes get stepped on.
 
> Explanations in terms of small developmental programs don't occur
> to our characatured panadaptationist - because he thinks that
> natural selection is the answer to all biological problems
> involving structure and form.

But - to play devil's advocate, because I tend to agree with you -  what 
if our caricatured (to keep Josh happy note the spelling) 
panadaptationist were to say that the developmental genes that led to 
segmentation got selected over other alternatives during the Cambrian 
explosion precisely because they made it easier for coordinated motion?

Yours,

Bill Morse
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