Guy Hoelzer  wrote:

> in article bm99k5$2vm9$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org, Paul Gallagher at
> pcg{at}panix.com wrote on 10/11/03 9:03 AM:
> 
> > In  Guy Hoelzer
 writes:
> > 
> >> My thought is that I think you have posed a bad question.  For example,
> >> mutation is completely essential for evolution, so it is hard for me to
> >> imagine that ANYTHING is a more important factor in evolution.  I also
> >> think that evolution could not persist without the influence of a
> >> deterministic, adaptive sub-process like natural selection.  I don't
> >> know what it would mean to say that one essential component is more or
> >> less important than another.
> > 
> > I think it's meaningful. Is copious variation maintained in populations
> > by selection, always present to supply whatever selection needs, or
> > does the absence of variation and the appearance of new mutations
> > bias the direction of evolution? It could be argued that these
> > are the issues that define neo-Darwinism. Arlin Stolzfus' posts are
> > useful, for example:
> > http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=9lk050%24fbi%241%40darwin.ediacara.org
> > http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=9pftoa%24frd%241%40darwin.ediacara.org
> > http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=91trfc%24orq%241%40darwin.ediacara.org
> 
> These are perfectly good questions, but I don't see how they help to
> distinguish the relative importances of essential factors.  I am adopting a
> functionalist stance, and I think that all functional systems require a
> balance between stochastic (creative) and deterministic (adaptive) factors.
> To me saying something like "selection is more important to evolution than
> mutation" is like saying that my circulatory system is more important to me
> than my digestive system.
> 
Evolution is what it is. It seems to me a mistake to say there is this
"thing", evolution, and ask what is most important to it the way we
might ask what is a critical path in a manufacturing process. If it
turns out in a particular case that there is a strong selective bias in
favour of some trait or gene, and that in another there is a lot of
drift and stochastic variation, then both of these cases are evolution.
So too is stabilising selection, punctuated equilibria, and all the
other facets of the dynamics of evolution. I fail to see how any of
these things can be "more important" than another simply because at some
point in any evolutionary process, it has happened. I must be missing
the point, though.

-- 
John Wilkins wilkins.id.au
For long you live and high you fly, 
and smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
and all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be
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