Books aside and being an artist, I see too much design and perfection around to write off everything as chance. If everything came about by chance then there's no point to life in general, meaning we're all just emo.

natural selection doesn't rely on chance, thankfully.

Originally posted by: Sharplimbed

natural selection doesn't rely on chance, thankfully.

I'm sure that Spinosaurus Egypticus would disagree with you there, along with every Paleontologist on the planet.

hmmm, maybe you're right. i looked rather foolish the other day when i missed your point. so i'll google "natural selection chance".

first link is to actionbioscience.org. It's an interview with Douglas Futuyma, a biologist. (wiki: click here for link)

Here's one of the questions:

How do scientists interpret "chance," and does it play a role in natural selection?

Futuyma: Philosophers and scientists use "chance" only in the sense of unpredictability. Chance means essentially that you cannot predict the outcome of a particular event. For example, you cannot predict whether your next child will be a son or a daughter, even though you can specify the probability or likelihood. "Chance" does not mean lack of purpose or goal in science. If it did, we could say that absolutely everything in the natural world is by chance because we don't see any purpose or goal in storms, in ocean currents, or anything else. Evolution certainly does involve randomness; it does involve unpredictable chance. For example, the origin of new genetic variation by mutation is a process that involves a great deal of chance. Genetic drift, the process I referred to earlier, is a matter of chance.

However, natural selection itself is the single process in evolution that is the antithesis of chance. It is predictable. It says that, within a specific environmental context, one genotype will be better than another genotype in survival or reproduction for certain reasons having to do with the way its particular features relate to the environment or relate to other organisms within the population. That provides predictability and consistency. So, if you have different populations with the same opportunity for evolution, you would get the same outcome.

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Do all palaeontologists really disagree on that? Ross on friends didn't seem to.

Originally posted by: LEATHERFACE

Originally posted by: Sharplimbed

natural selection doesn't rely on chance, thankfully.

I'm sure that Spinosaurus Egypticus would disagree with you there, along with every Paleontologist on the planet.

I think you're misunderstanding things dude. Hear me out...

Natural selection is the result of an environment selecting the "fittest" (a statistical expression of the chances to produce viable offspring) organisms. It is, by definition actually, the opposite of chance. Wouldn't you agree with this?

Now mutations, for all intents and purposes you can call "random".

Natural selection cannot be boxed in to a set geographic or controlled environment, doing so is a direct effort to portray a sense of order.
A good read, but I seriously doubt the KT impact was on a schedule.

Originally posted by: squanto

Originally posted by: LEATHERFACE

Originally posted by: Sharplimbed

natural selection doesn't rely on chance, thankfully.

I'm sure that Spinosaurus Egypticus would disagree with you there, along with every Paleontologist on the planet.

I think you're misunderstanding things dude. Hear me out...

Natural selection is the result of an environment selecting the "fittest" (a statistical expression of the chances to produce viable offspring) organisms. It is, by definition actually, the opposite of chance. Wouldn't you agree with this?

Now mutations, for all intents and purposes you can call "random".

So mutations aren't included in natural selection?

You're missing the point. No one's saying natural selection isn't limited to mutations that do happen by chance, but what it does with those mutations is not a chance process. It's just saying if you could do an experiment with set conditions, you could repeat it and get the same result. Hence it being the "antithesis of chance".

I'm sure a lot of people can explain that much better than me. It's explained pretty well in that interview.

Originally posted by: LEATHERFACE

Originally posted by: squanto

Originally posted by: LEATHERFACE

Originally posted by: Sharplimbed

natural selection doesn't rely on chance, thankfully.

I'm sure that Spinosaurus Egypticus would disagree with you there, along with every Paleontologist on the planet.

I think you're misunderstanding things dude. Hear me out...

Natural selection is the result of an environment selecting the "fittest" (a statistical expression of the chances to produce viable offspring) organisms. It is, by definition actually, the opposite of chance. Wouldn't you agree with this?

Now mutations, for all intents and purposes you can call "random".

So mutations aren't included in natural selection?

Correctamundo.

Mutations can be acted upon by natural selection, but they are two different "forces" of evolution.

I understand what you're saying, and yes, it is thus far a predictable thing.
BUT
Take it out of its place on the shelf of rhetoric and you are left with chaos in the big picture.