What evidence is there for evolution being non-random?

[articulett]

Several studies of individual species—such as cichlid fish in Lake Victoria—support Darwin’s hypothesis of natural selection as a direct cause of speciation. Funk’s study is the first to look for a general pattern across many species. The team found existing data on eight different animal and plant groups that tracked interbreeding capacity over time and compared it with data on environmental factors such as habitat and diet.

http://seedmagazine.com/news/2006/03/in_support_of_natural_selectio.php

"direct cause"... that's determinism, right?

 

[articulett]

Fine posts, #1428 and #1430 Schneibester: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=2732834#post2732834

Especially: #1428:





I thought he had fixed it, in response to specific questions that I had asked, to clear up this question.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=2727715#post2727715



"All models are wrong, some are useful." -George Box (another statistician)

I'd argue that saying natural selection is probabilistic is useful in making predictions and explaining features.

I'd say that arguing that fighter aircrft evolved is not useful, is misleading, and really plays into the hands of ID proponents.

Articulett, do you see the essential difference between artificial selection and natural selection, and evolutionary algorithms and natural selection?

As (I think) steenkh, has said, farmers are good at only letting those organisms breed that they wish to. Of course natural selection modulates this, but artificial selection has a set of predefined goals.



Jim

Yes, I am aware of the differences--but you are missing the similarities. And not all goals are really predefined. The internet is evolving and no one has any predefined goal. With farmers we choose which preferentially survives--we aid the survival and reproduction of those life forms that are useful for us. We have long been refining life without consciously doing so--every time we plant a seed or feed an animal. Nature has a predefined goal too--even though it isn't conscious--it provides an environment and information (DNA) must get replicated or die out. The better replicator a genome makes--the more chances it has to escape the ever life eliminating aspects of every environment. Chances are humans didn't plan having pets when they allowed friendlier wolves to eat their scraps...but they were allowing the friendlier canines to preferentially survive... The information in the genome that influenced that trait made sure that that trait got passed on.

It really isn't as different as you are imagining it to be. At what point is something "predetermined". You might choose to live in a town and so become a part of that towns "evolution"--but you didn't preplan the town and you have no knowledge of what else will evolve. That is the same for life. The most recent common ancestor of all humans could not know that he would be responsible for all the people who exist in 2007-- But the fact that he is...isn't random. Natures algorithm? Which vectors copied the most info. before dying. Anything in the genome that helped the vectors survive or reproduce is copied to the exact extent that it made the organism fitter and compounded though time. And fitter just means how many copies did it make?

DNA is information just like a computer program...the algorithm used for games like spore or for computer viruses are very similar to nature's algorithms. Really. Although the engineers made the "random mutations"--the selection was biased in very much the same way it is in nature. Selective pressures drove the change in the nozzles. Selective pressures drive the change in agriculture. And selection pressures drive the changing of species from one to another. It's much more the same than you are

And, I use the way airplanes have evolved over time and it helps my students understand natural selection better than you seem to. They seem to see the similarities that you don't. And I am well versed on creationist strategies--understanding the evolution of anything helps you understand the evolution of everything. Your use of language is much more likely to be utilized by creationists than mine is. In fact, they are likely to say as you do--"but human selection is different than natural selection." --Not as much as you seem to think. And human selection has many more "random components" that you seem to ignore while highlighting them in regards to natural selection. In all cases, the environment shapes the change of an information vector. Whether it's refining aircraft through time (information is the blueprint, the vector is the airplane built from the blue print), recipes, nozzles, artificial selection, or natural selection. What comes next is entirely determined by what has worked so far. Can you see how they are similar?
Because that is something you don't seem to be registering from what I can tell.

 

[articulett]

I didn't see this before posting my previous reply.

I would not disagree with anything that Sean Carroll has written, if one wanted to discuss the probabilities I would attempt to do so in a similar fashion to my previous post.

Behe has, through ignorence or malice, guess which I suspect, completely ignored how selection works. He seems to be arguing that selective advantage is all or nothing, whereas I would point out that it is a percentage game, and increasing the probabilities of survival is all that is needed. Sean Carrol says something similar too.

Small populations and short time: the advantages need to be big. Large populations or many generations, the advantages can be slight and still be selected for.


I don't really understand how Behe uses the word random. I suspect this is not through any inadvertant faiure of communication on his part. It seems to me like "telling lies for Christ" or dishonesty in what he percieves to be a just cause.

In the nozzle example I would say it shows how evolution can work, just remember that in natural selection the "goal" is reproduction and that is not boiled down to a simple measurable predefined trait, only how many offspring actually breed, the measure of success of a bee colony is how many queens it produces.

I would say the selection was non-random in the nozzle example, as the "fitness environment" is fixed, and the selection criteria are fixed. There might be some "random" selections in the algorithm to avoid being stuck in local optima. But I would be failrly sure that the best is always selected as a parent.

I slightly prefer selective breeding, as the raw material is the same as in natural selection.

To select a dog for speed, one would eventually come up with something like a greyhound. To select a dog for reproduction one could just leave alone.

What about if you just the speedy dogs were just better at getting away when people tried to shoot them for eating from their trashcan....then you'd be selecting for speed without a plan. Nature selecs for the best copy machines--even if it just means the dog lived another day to mate yet again.

But I think, all in all we agree. Yes, yes, it's all based on probabilities. Yes randomness is important. Natural selection can lead to huge changes in a really short time so that it might look like there are gaps in the fossil record, but the time between intermediaries was just too short because there was a strong bias for particular phenotypes (look what we've managed to do with wolves in a very short type with strong selective pressures...growing increasingly stronger through time.) Strong selective pressures compound the changes--weak selective pressures can evolve to strong selective pressures.

 

[jimbob]

Re: articulett's post #1440 http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=2733468#post2733468

From articulett's link (full text not just abstract)

Natural selection accounts for the ‘‘design’’ of organisms because
adaptive variations tend to increase the probability of survival and
reproduction of their carriers at the expense of maladaptive, or less
adaptive, variations.

When discussing about the subject in detail, probability is used to describe natural selection. (At least in this paper).

It is almost word for word what I have been writing.

 

[articulett]

Bacteria copy themselves like crazy--so they come up with beneficial (for them) mutations all the time. If you have an infection and take antibiotics, you might kill most of the bacteria, but suppose one bacteria had a deformity caused by a mutation...a mutations that resulted in an extra thick cell membrane. Suppose this deformity made it able to resist the antibiotic and so it got to make a bunch of copies of itself and it's deformity and they begat and so on...

The mutation was random. The deformity was random. But was the survival of that particular bacteria and it's successful thriving spawn a result of randomeness? Probability? Or was it determined by the fact that it had a random mutation that allowed it to preferentially survive while others perished?

I would go with the third option. I would add that it would be very misleading to say it's survival was random.

 

[articulett]

Re: articulett's post #1440 http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=2733468#post2733468

From articulett's link (full text not just abstract)



When discussing about the subject in detail, probability is used to describe natural selection. (At least in this paper).

It is almost word for word what I have been writing.

And almost word for word what I've been writing:

Natural selection accounts for the "design" of organisms because adaptive variations tend to increase the probability of survival and reproduction of their carriers at the expense of maladaptive, or less adaptive, variations. The arguments of intelligent design proponents that state the incredible improbability of chance events, such as mutation, to account for the adaptations of organisms are irrelevant because evolution is not governed by random mutations. Rather, there is a natural process (namely, natural selection) that is not random but oriented and able to generate order or "create." The traits that organisms acquire in their evolutionary histories are not fortuitous but rather determined by their functional utility to the organisms, designed, as it were, to serve their life needs.

Natural selection is:
"not random but oriented" to generate order (a nod to Schneibster)...
"not fortuitous, but rather determined"


And, note the reason for the distinction is due to the creationist claim--as I have been arguing.

 

[sphenisc]

Oh Look--from the Determinism--the opposite of random...right? Natural selection is determined by which genomes create the most successful copying "machines" for themselves in whatever environment they find themselves in. Meteors and thorns are part of nature and part of natural selection.

Ha.

Meteors and thorns, perhaps but apparently not lightning...

Fitness^WP

As another example we may mention the definition of fitness given by Maynard Smith in the following way: ”Fitness is a property, not of an individual, but of a class of individuals – for example homozygous for allele A at a particular locus. Thus the phrase ’expected number of offspring’ means the average number, not the number produced by some one individual. If the first human infant with a gene for levitation were struck by lightning in its pram, this would not prove the new genotype to have low fitness, but only that the particular child was unlucky.”

 

[Schneibster]

Read this. What they are describing is Kaufman's NK model of fitness landscapes; they've done a real experiment based on it, not a computer model. The NK model uses an algorithm that says that a single allele change among N alleles has a fitness effect on an average of K other alleles. These experimenters showed that viruses have K tuned to a value that maximizes their ability to achieve medium fitness on a fairly rugged fitness landscape. This is a survival trait, as the outcome of the experiment shows.

Kaufman's model is based on the interconnectedness of sites on DNA. It is used on fitness landscapes of varying levels of "ruggedness," that is, a "smooth" landscape would have few "peaks" of high fitness, whereas a "rugged" landscape has many local peaks of lesser fitness. Kaufman has shown using computer models (and these folks have confirmed it using a real experiment) that a more "rugged" landscape permits a random walk to achieve medium fitness quickly enough to avoid extinction with values in the range that the viruses showed.

A rugged fitness landscape is relatively random; the fitness at any given point varies quite a bit. A smooth fitness landscape is what you, articulett, are calling "deterministic." The fitness on a smooth landscape has one or a few high peaks, and thus is less random; it's also generally low. Kaufman showed in a model, and these experimenters have proved in their experiment, that the randomness of the fitness landscape increases the opportunities for organisms with random mutations to survive. In other words, the more random the selection criteria, the better the organisms evolve.

So yes, I'd say evolution is random. In fact, if it were deterministic, at least as you mean it, evolution would not work. The smoother the evolution landscape, the higher K needs to be; and high values of K are not easy to achieve. On a more rugged (random!) landscape, only medium values of K are needed to achieve medium fitness.

 

[mijopaalmc]

Bacteria copy themselves like crazy--so they come up with beneficial (for them) mutations all the time. If you have an infection and take antibiotics, you might kill most of the bacteria, but suppose one bacteria had a deformity caused by a mutation...a mutations that resulted in an extra thick cell membrane. Suppose this deformity made it able to resist the antibiotic and so it got to make a bunch of copies of itself and it's deformity and they begat and so on...

The mutation was random. The deformity was random. But was the survival of that particular bacteria and it's successful thriving spawn a result of randomeness? Probability? Or was it determined by the fact that it had a random mutation that allowed it to preferentially survive while others perished?

I would go with the third option. I would add that it would be very misleading to say it's survival was random.

You only think it is misleading because you are apparently not using the same definition of "random". I do not know exactly what definition your are using, but you are definitely obfuscating because the definition we have been using is neither hard to understand nor meaningless due to its supposed ease of application to everything.

As long as we are discussing haploid, asexually reproducing population, I would like to refer you back to the work done by Rouzine and his colleagues on HIV evolution. These figures accompanied Linkage disequilibrium test implies a large effective population number for HIV in vivo:

Notice how even when the effective population size is larger than the inverse of the mutation rate (Fig 3c.) the frequency for the mutant that is selected against varies randomly compared to the deterministic model (i.e., the smooth curve). It is true that in the long run this behavior can be "tamed" by averaging the mutant frequency over many generations. However, this does not change the fact that the variation itself is random because it is due to how the population is sampled each generation.

Note:

In the interest of honesty, I admit that the authors do make repeated distinction between (stochastic) drift and (deterministic) selection. However, this does not prevent them from describing evolution as a whole as "stochastic" or implying that deterministic modeling is the limit behavior of the stochastic model when the population is "sufficiently large":

Random factors can be neglected, and deterministic theory applied, only if the population is sufficiently large.

 

[steenkh]

So, to say that selection is deterministic you have to determine what question you are interested in. Do you care about "fit" vs. "non-fit", or do you care about which specific genes, from among those that are "fit" will survive.

We know that only "fit" genes will survive, but the number of "fit" genes that will survive is less than the total gene pool of "fit" genes.

I completely agree. I would also describe the selection of which fit genes to survive as being random. The element of non-randomness to me is in the un-selection of unfit genes.

The context of the person telling you to roll the die will tell you whether or not it is appropriate to use a load die. In most cases, dice are specifically chosen in order to generate a uniformly distributed integer, starting at 1 and going to the number of sides on a die. However, this is not always the case. There was a series of wargames published in the 70s and 80's that used "average dice". These dice, that were called for on certain tables, had sides labeled 2,3,3,4,4,5. I'm sure that there would be people who insist that those dice weren't random, but those people would be wrong.

You are just picking nits here, but I find it amusing too. Although I have never seen the "averaging die" used in wargames, it was certainly used in role-playing games.

 

[jimbob]

I completely agree. I would also describe the selection of which fit genes to survive as being random. The element of non-randomness to me is in the un-selection of unfit genes.

Yes, the odds of any individual reproducing are already low, so anything that reduces that further will very quickly get weeded out.

Malthus.

The population will grow to the maximum that can be supported, whereupon, any slignht increase in hardship will result in a population crash. The natural state for any organism is struggling for resouces, and for most individuals in a species failing to produce offspring that themselves reproduce.

 

[articulett]

You only think it is misleading because you are apparently not using the same definition of "random". I do not know exactly what definition your are using, but you are definitely obfuscating because the definition we have been using is neither hard to understand nor meaningless due to its supposed ease of application to everything.

I'm using the definition published in this article from the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS is one of the most prestigious peer reviewed science publications and one of the oldest). My definition comes from the previously mentioned article and is very recent, published just days after you ask your OP question. Perhaps you and Schneibster should take your problems with their definitions up with them or restrict your audience to those who find your definitions useful--Behe, for example.

PNAS MAY 2006
The arguments of intelligent design proponents that state the incredible improbability of chance events, such as mutation, to account for the adaptations of organisms are irrelevant because evolution is not governed by random mutations. Rather, there is a natural process (namely, natural selection) that is not random but oriented and able to generate order or "create."

 

[Schneibster]

Anybody who puts Kaufman in the same league with Behe is a woo. You wanna try again?

 

[mijopaalmc]

I'm using the definition published in this article from the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS is one of the most prestigious peer reviewed science publications and one of the oldest). My definition comes from the previously mentioned article and is very recent, published just days after you ask your OP question. Perhaps you and Schneibster should take your problems with their definitions up with them or restrict your audience to those who find your definitions useful--Behe, for example.

PNAS MAY 2006
The arguments of intelligent design proponents that state the incredible improbability of chance events, such as mutation, to account for the adaptations of organisms are irrelevant because evolution is not governed by random mutations. Rather, there is a natural process (namely, natural selection) that is not random but oriented and able to generate order or "create."

That is not the argument at hand though and I challenge you to find explicit quotations where any of the "randomites" here has said anything that equates the randomness of evolution with the impossibility of evolution.

 

[articulett]

Anybody who puts Kaufman in the same league with Behe is a woo. You wanna try again?

Um... you better try again. Kaufman IS using the same definition of Random as in the PNAS article. He is talking about how random changes are selected via the environment. He is not saying natural selection IS random or that evolution IS random. You seem to be confused about random changes inside a vector--and how only those random changes that can be "seen" by the environment are selected for or against. In "rugged" environments--you see quicker changes and in "smoother" environments, the changes are slower and lots more neutral stuff spreads through genomes that can later be modified and selected for or against--or become junk. What Kaufman is saying does not conflict with the PNAS article and with what I am saying. It's just talking about molecular genetics. Darwin couldn't see genomes. He could only say that the differences in the species were due to preferential survival of inherited traits that gave them an advantage in the environments they found themselves in.

It's like the PNAS article is saying--from a distance, you can see what a rich shade of purple this is--and Kaufman is saying, "up close it isn't really purple but a random array of dots in various shades of blue and red." Darwin couldn't get up close. But he was right. DNA has confirmed it beyond our wildest expectations.

Do you actually think Kaufman is using a different definition of random than in the PNAS article? Are you arguing that the PNAS article is using the term random incorrectly? Are you thinking I'm saying something other than what the PNAS article is saying? And you never did tell me how I was hoisted by my own petard;

I think the communication problem may be you, Schneibster my friend. You are drawing some very shaky conclusions. I didn't say Kaufman's definition of random would be of interest to Behe. You inferred that. In fact, you seem to be inferring a lot about me, what the definition of random is, what scientists consider random--and whether natural selection can be properly termed "not random".

And, I still think Mijo is an "intelligent design" proponent. It's an inference--but it's one many share. Or maybe just a religion apologist.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=85338 (just don't say I didn't try to give you a heads up... in fact, a couple of others arguing as you do on this forum seem to be religious apologists too for some reason. They seem to think it's worse to call some religious practices abusive then to tell little kids that scientists teach false facts.)

I don't expect you to apologize, but please stop with the incorrect inferences
.
The facts are the same. There's no need to get hung up on semantics. We agree, I think. I was just trying to show you why your understanding of natural selection seems very vague and easily warped by cretinists and why "natural selection" is what biologists use to answer mijo's OP question. Are you saying the PNAS link is answering his question wrong?

 

[articulett]

That is not the argument at hand though and I challenge you to find explicit quotations where any of the "randomites" here has said anything that equates the randomness of evolution with the impossibility of evolution.

This answers the question in your OP. It is a peer reviewed article explaining why and how "natural selection" (a major component of Evolution) is considered not random. That is what you were looking for, right? Or are you calling their definition of "not random" incorrect--because if so, that is something you need to take up with PNAS. They don't seem to be using your definition in their articles. Somehow, the majority of scientists in peer reviewed publication do not use the definition you are going with. That's the answer to your OP. Per your definition, evolution IS random. But so is everything, because what can't be described by a probability distribution?...even tornados making 747s in junkyards can be. Hence, I and most scientists will probably stick to the definition in the PNAS article.

Good Bye.

 

[Schneibster]

Um... you better try again. Kaufman IS using the same definition of Random as in the PNAS article. He is talking about how random changes are selected via the environment. He is not saying natural selection IS random or that evolution IS random.

Well, at least you backed down from THAT claim.

You seem to be confused about random changes inside a vector--and how only those random changes that can be "seen" by the environment are selected for or against. In "rugged" environments--you see quicker changes and in "smoother" environments, the changes are slower and lots more neutral stuff spreads through genomes that can later be modified and selected for or against--or become junk.

No, on smoother landscapes, you see extinction- unless the system by some chance happens to come up with the solution that takes it to a peak. The point is, there ARE no smoother landscapes- and that's why I keep saying, "you don't understand what random means."

What Kaufman is saying does not conflict with the PNAS article and with what I am saying.

I strongly disagree- at least with the second assertion. I haven't evaluated Kaufman against that piece from the PNAS- nor you. It's not my problem.

It's just talking about molecular genetics.

No, it's not. It's talking about selection, and mutation. BOTH.

Darwin couldn't see genomes. He could only say that the differences in the species were due to preferential survival of inherited traits that gave them an advantage in the environments they found themselves in.

Precisely- and as a result, he wasn't able to quantify what he saw. He was able to give a qualitative description- not a quantitative one. He did the best he could with what he had- and that best was very good indeed. But never forget that it is only a qualitative analysis- a quantitative analysis had to wait until we understood chaos- the essence of randomness.

It's like the PNAS article is saying--from a distance, you can see what a rich shade of purple this is--and Kaufman is saying, "up close it isn't really purple but a random array of dots in various shades of blue and red." Darwin couldn't get up close. But he was right. DNA has confirmed it beyond our wildest expectations.

Sure- that's what I said. But never forget the difference between an argument that involves quality and one that involves quantity. The second is always considered definitive when it becomes available. And the qualitative analysis says, the individual events are random. And it is required that they be random, so that the algorithm will work. If they're not random enough, then the result is extinction, unless the organism can push K high enough, or N low enough.

Do you actually think Kaufman is using a different definition of random than in the PNAS article?

I don't know. I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in the fact that whatever definition he's using, it's REQUIRED that BOTH selection landscapes and mutations be random.

Are you arguing that the PNAS article is using the term random incorrectly?

Again, I neither know nor care. It is required under Kaufman's definition that both selection landscapes and mutations be random, or evolution doesn't work.

Are you thinking I'm saying something other than what the PNAS article is saying?

Yet again, I neither know nor care. It is required under Kaufman's definition of random that both selection landscapes and mutations are random, or evolution doesn't work.

And you never did tell me how I was hoisted by my own petard;

I did, you just didn't read it, or didn't understand it.

I think the communication problem may be you, Schneibster my friend. You are drawing some very shaky conclusions.

My conclusions are Kaufman's: evolution requires randomness in both the fitness landscape (that is, the selection criteria) and the mutation, or it WILL NOT WORK. Period. End of conversation. I see no more point in this.

 

[articulett]

In other words, the more random the selection criteria, the better the organisms evolve.

So yes, I'd say evolution is random. In fact, if it were deterministic, at least as you mean it, evolution would not work. The smoother the evolution landscape, the higher K needs to be; and high values of K are not easy to achieve. On a more rugged (random!) landscape, only medium values of K are needed to achieve medium fitness.

The better they evolve? Do you mean, the more the phenotype will change or be modified in a particular direction?

And how is it that you think I mean "deterministic"? The only way I mean it is as it is used by the PNAS article. So, again, if you are having problems with my definitions--you are having problems with the PNAS definition--argue your case with them, not me. Per their definition of "deterministic" which is also my definition--evolution works just fine--of course we don't apply it to evolution as a whole--just to natural selection.

Per their definition, mutations are relatively random, but selection is determined by the replicators built from genomes (that change randomly) and how they fair and reproduce in the environment they find themselves in. Per their definition, natural selection is the "non-random" part of evolution. Take up your problems with definitions with them. Not me.

Yes, randomness plays a big role in evolution. But natural selection plays a bigger role in honing that randomness into the varieties of phenotypes we see today.

 

[articulett]

It's sad that you accuse me of not reading your article, when you are the one refusing to read and you are the one who can't say how I was hoisted by my own petard. I read both. None says Evolution is random nor natural selection is random. Also, I didn't say anything about Kaufman's definition so I'm not "backing down"...I just pointed if a definition is vague enough that it one can sum up evolution as "random"--then it's just what Behe is looking for. Kaufman's definition is not.

And my definitions strongly supported scientific definitions despite your claims to the contrary per the Periodical of the Natural Association of Scientists. Mine are identical. My arguments are the same. If you think they are wrong, take it up with them instead of telling me I'm not reading stuff, understanding stuff, or talking to 6 year olds. This was published May 13,, 2007, in one PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

PNAS is one of the world's most-cited multidisciplinary scientific serials. Since its establishment in 1914, it continues to publish cutting-edge research reports, commentaries, reviews, perspectives, colloquium papers, and actions of the Academy. Coverage in PNAS spans the biological, physical, and social sciences.

Do not mischarachterize me any more--direct your argument at the people who speak for biologists and physicists at PNAS. My definitions of the highlighted terms are identical to their use here. My arguments are the same. I have not said or implied anything else in regards to randomness and natural selection.

The arguments of intelligent design proponents that state the incredible improbability of chance events, such as mutation, to account for the adaptations of organisms are irrelevant because evolution is not governed by random mutations. Rather, there is a natural process (namely, natural selection) that is not random but oriented and able to generate order or "create." The traits that organisms acquire in their evolutionary histories are not fortuitous but rather determined by their functional utility to the organisms, designed, as it were, to serve their life needs.

Chance is, nevertheless, an integral part of the evolutionary process. The mutations that yield the hereditary variations available to natural selection arise at random. Mutations are random or chance events because (i) they are rare exceptions to the fidelity of the process of DNA replication and because (ii) there is no way of knowing which gene will mutate in a particular cell or in a particular individual. However, the meaning of "random" that is most significant for understanding the evolutionary process is (iii) that mutations are unoriented with respect to adaptation; they occur independently of whether or not they are beneficial or harmful to the organisms. Some are beneficial, most are not, and only the beneficial ones become incorporated in the organisms through natural selection.

The adaptive randomness of the mutation process (as well as the vagaries of other processes that come to play in the great theater of life) is counteracted by natural selection, which preserves what is useful and eliminates what is harmful. Without hereditary mutations, evolution could not happen because there would be no variations that could be differentially conveyed from one to another generation. But without natural selection, the mutation process would yield disorganization and extinction because most mutations are disadvantageous. Mutation and selection have jointly driven the marvelous process that, starting from microscopic organisms, has yielded orchids, birds, and humans.

The theory of evolution conveys chance and necessity jointly enmeshed in the stuff of life; randomness and determinism interlocked in a natural process that has spurted the most complex, diverse, and beautiful entities that we know of in the universe: the organisms that populate the Earth, including humans who think and love, endowed with free will and creative powers, and able to analyze the process of evolution itself that brought them into existence. This is Darwin's fundamental discovery, that there is a process that is creative although not conscious. And this is the conceptual revolution that Darwin completed: the idea that the design of living organisms can be accounted for as the result of natural processes governed by natural laws. This is nothing if not a fundamental vision that has forever changed how mankind perceives itself and its place in the universe.

This answers mijo's OP--and if it doesn't work with your definitions, take it up with them. I don't see any recent scientific papers summing up evolution or natural selection as a "random" process--despite your insistence that it is or that your papers say so. Hence, I think it's your definition of "random" that needs to be modified. My definition are supported by the most current and respected scientific literature--and not some made up definition as you and mijo imply. Random IS an ambiguous term.

Sorry guys.

Oh, and once again--having random components does not make an entire process random. If that was the case than Algebra would be random and algorithms. I mean, you could call them that, but it's about as uninformative as calling evolution random when "random" is only half the equation--and not even true randomness at that.

tsk. I guess you didn't really want peer reviewed papers telling you the evidence for why or how evolution is non random afterall, did you Mijo?

 

[jimbob]

Articulett, here is the text that you are arguing about

Natural selection accounts for the "design" of organisms because adaptive variations tend to increase the probability of survival and reproduction of their carriers at the expense of maladaptive, or less adaptive, variations.

This is the bit that says probabilistic.

The arguments of intelligent design proponents that state the incredible improbability of chance events, such as mutation, to account for the adaptations of organisms are irrelevant because evolution is not governed by random mutations.

"Not governed by random mutations."
Very specific

Rather, there is a natural process (namely, natural selection) that is not random but oriented and able to generate order or "create." The traits that organisms acquire in their evolutionary histories are not fortuitous but rather determined by their functional utility to the organisms, designed, as it were, to serve their life needs.

I can see where they are comming from, but would have preferred "not merely random, but biased as well".

Of course what happens is determined by natural selection, that is the selective process.

When speaking precisely, the biologists all use random/probabilistic as every other math-using discipline.

Do you understand what Schneibester is actually saying about the fitness landscape. It needs to be rugged for natural selection to work.

And so far, most of your discussion ahs been about a hypothetical Stable environment.

I have a picture of such an environment below:

And whilst we are quibbling, Chickens did not evolve from T-Rex.


Jim