Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Lev
Dawkins 'cooked' his rules not to prove evolution ...

Nonsense.

66 posted on 03/06/2002 8:42:34 AM PST by Phaedrus
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 60 | View Replies ]


To: Phaedrus
Lev: Dawkins 'cooked' his rules not to prove evolution but to show the difference between a purely random process and a process with a fitness function.

Nonsense.

You are wrong. Here's what Dawkins said:

Although the monkey/Shakespeare model is useful for explaining the distinction between single-step seleciton and cumulative selection, it is misleading in important ways. One of these is that, in each generation of selective 'breading', the mutant 'progeny' phrases were judged according to the criterion of resemblance to a distant ideal target, the phrase METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WASEL. Life isn't like that. Evolution has no long-term goal. There is no long-distance target, no final perfection to serve as a criterion for selection, although human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution. In real life, the criterion for selection is always short-term, either simple survival or, more generally, reproductive success. If, after the aeons, what looks like progress towards some distant goal seems, with hindsight, to have been achieved, this is always an incidental consequence of many generations of short-term selection. The 'watchmaker' that is cumulative natural selection is blind to the future and has n o long-term goal.

360 posted on 03/08/2002 7:55:11 PM PST by Lev
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 66 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson