songbird wrote:
David Hare-Scott wrote:
songbird wrote:
David Hare-Scott wrote:
...
This application of complexity theory is not universally accepted.
No matter the point that I was trying to make, that the outcomes of
evolution are limited by the availablity of pathways from the
previous situation to a new one remains. Whether this postulated
mechanism opens up more pathways that permit greater leaps from one
state to another remains to be seen, as does how often it might
occur.

well now that there is an active designer in the house
the game will significantly change... already it has
begun and we're only in the few slivers of time in
terms of the past and how long things have gone before.

i would love to be able to sleep for five hundred or
a thousand years and be able to come back and see what
has happened.

I don't understand what you are saying. Could you be more explicit?

saying that evolution is undirected is false.

Just to make sure we are not misunderstanding each other, what I mean is
there are no targets or goals in structure or function the process aims for.
That is there is no specific direction set from the outset, no planning.
That doesn't mean that there is no change for the better (better only in the
sense of more adapted to the current environment) but that such changes are
reached by a combination of natural mechanisms that could well reach some
other position. Evolution may or may not result in the reproductive success
of the organism, if it does the organism is sufficiently suited to the
environment if not it dies out. This is a critical point, there may be many
possible adaptations, or combinations of them, that bring about a similar
result but they are not known in advance.

If you accept that then we agree. If not why do you say that?


it is directed (sometimes in ways that are
contradictory (one day it is cold, the next
day it is hot), sometimes orthogonal to the
variation (the change favors big feet with
webs between the toes but the species lives
on rocks not in or near water) but now there
is a new more potent form of direction, an
actual designer who can get around poor
starting designs by coming up with something
completely different.


OK, who or what is this designer and how does she/it do this designing?
What evidence do you have that such exists and please give an example of it
doing its thing.

i for one would like a newly redesigned
spine that isn't succeptible to disk bulges
which pinch nerves. it is likely that within
a few hundred to a thousand years we may
actually get a differently designed spinal
column

How will that happen? How do you know it will happen?

(or leave biological forms behind in
various ways).



Are you talking about entering The Matrix or what?

If you are tending towards religion or mysticism then you are outside the
scope of science and there is no point in us going any further with this.

D