Your comment is fatuous. Think about it this way. Could the authoritative text of Hamlet (assume that this phrase has a referent) have arisen by a evolutionary process from an ur-Hamlet text as discerning theater audiences chose between random variant texts? So, in one version, Hamlet soliloquizes "To be or not to BRIE," but that loses out in popularity to "To be or not to BE," and so on, as theater audiences painstakingly improve the text word by word. Isn't this story ridiculous? Yet something like it is the standard account of evolution.
LOL - this thread is still going, is it? Well, I tell you what - why not skim through the next 450+ posts, as I think that this article has been rather convincingly wrecked by the sum total of those. If, after that, you still find my post to be fatuous, you can post back and tell me which part you object to. In the mean time...
Think about it this way. Could the authoritative text of Hamlet (assume that this phrase has a referent) have arisen by a evolutionary process from an ur-Hamlet text as discerning theater audiences chose between random variant texts? So, in one version, Hamlet soliloquizes "To be or not to BRIE," but that loses out in popularity to "To be or not to BE," and so on, as theater audiences painstakingly improve the text word by word.
That strikes me as a very good way to think of it, actually. The improvments that are approved of are kept for the next round, and those that are less popular are discarded, until you get to the final product.
Isn't this story ridiculous?
It is only an analogy intended to illustrate the principle. And the principle is sound, even if the particulars of this analogy seem rather silly ;)