Tim Tyler wrote:

> Jeffrey Turner  wrote or quoted:
> 

>>Everything is "accidental". [...]
> 
> 
> Not the usual adaptionist's tune - and not according to (e.g.)
> Simon Conway Morris's latest book:
> 
> Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe 
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0521827043/
> 
> Morris argues from examples of biological convergence that life
> is anything but accidental - but that its tendency to repeatedly
> discover the same things over and over again shows that the forms
> of living organisms are _not_ accidental - or due to chance - but
> rather are consequences of natural law.

Wasn't one of Fisher's quips that evolution is a way of creating the 
improbable with a high degree of chance?  Something like that.

I don't find the argument convincing, simply because the same accident 
can happen more than once.  If there is a "natural law", then it's role 
is to create constraints on evolution - e.g. you can't fly without 
having some means of overcoming gravity.  The fact that wings have 
evolved suggests that this is the easiest route for the accidents to take.

Bob

-- 
Bob O'Hara
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
P.O. Box 4 (Yliopistonkatu 5)
FIN-00014 University of Helsinki
Finland
Telephone: +358-9-191 23743
Mobile: +358 50 599 0540
Fax:  +358-9-191 22 779
WWW:  http://www.RNI.Helsinki.FI/~boh/

Journal of Negative Results - EEB: www.jnr-eeb.org
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