RE: virus: Un-natural De-selection
Robin Faichney (r.j.faichney@stir.ac.uk)
Fri, 15 Aug 1997 09:47:00 +0100
Brett Lane Robertson wrote:
>
>Darwinian theory has the sizable burden of
>proving that the negative, braking power of selective
>demise, coupled with the blind chaotic power of
>randomness, can produce the persistent, creative,
>positive drive toward more complexity we see sustained
>in nature over billions of years.
If there is such a drive, why are the simplest forms of
life the most successful? (Consider bacteria, nematodes.)
It's obvious that complexity *can* be adaptive. It is very
far from obvious that that fact, taken with standard
evolutionary theory, is insufficient to explain the lifeforms
we see around us.
Robin