Friday, December 01, 2006

In a short but interesting interview with Daniel Dennett on TheTech.org, Dennett describes natural selection as generating "exquisitely well designed materials," but adds that the process is "profligate" and "wasteful." In other words, it is a very inefficient process.

However, we are seeing increasing evidence that organisms use their genes efficiently, with different creatures putting the same genes to similar but different uses. This is another example of the power of science to explain how.

What's missing is the why. We know that the process of natural selection aids in survival, but why do the very simple organisms from which all the complexity of life originated incessantly push for change? What was wrong with the status quo? Are they always compelled by their environment?

The answer could be - in reference to the prior post - that no those organisms weren't always pushed by their environment and that instead all nature including humans has aspirations. Science seems to be taking up the gauntlet on this, and certainly that's what FC was in a way pursuing, and we more so.

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