<<Good grief, Randy, I'm referring to your quote of Denton, the quote
that characterizes Darwinism as pure chance, the quote that so
mis-characterizes Darwinism that it falls just short of being an
out right lie.>>
Brian, I think you're right that "pure chance" is NOT a proper
characterization of Darwinism as a whole. But in Chapter 13 of Denton's book,
it becomes clear not only that his use of "pure chance" is related to the
mutational part of the equation, but that others use the same terminology:
"According to the central axiom of Darwinian theory, the initial elementary
mutational changes upon which natural selection acts are entirely random,
completely blind to whatever effect they may have on the function or structure
of the organism in which they occur, 'drawn,' in Monod's words, from 'the
realm of pure chance.' It is only after an innovation has been disclosed by
chance that it can be seen by natural selection and conserved."
Denton, I think, is being held to something he never said. Dawkins does the
same thing in The Blind Watchmaker (see pp. 306-309). So anxious is he to
distance himself from pure chance, that he sets up several extreme definitions
of "random" just so he can knock them down. One of these is the "equally
likely" argument that Brian has brought up, too. Denton never uses it, so why
is it used against him?
Denton does not argue that "anything is possible" at the mutational level.
Only that the mutations which do occur do so by PURE CHANCE. And they do:
"The mutation process is generally thought to be an uncontrollable chance
phenomenon." [Volpe, Understanding Evolution, 1970, Wm. Brown & Co., p. 33,
Jim Bell's college text, dog-eared and highlighted, with nasty notes about the
professor]
The mutational definition of random Brian uses is:
<< In Darwinism, random as in random mutation means
only that the appearance of a mutation does not anticipate the
needs of an organism.>>
Dawkins says, "Mutation is not systematically biased in the direction of
adaptive improvement."
I find this misleading. Mutations not only don't "anticipate needs," they
arise without ANY predictive preview (except when you zap fruitflies in the
lab, but that's another story). In nature, no one knows when a mutation will
arise, or precisely what form it will take (though, yes, there ARE limits. But
that's a different consideration). Most of the time mutations are negative,
of course (a point usually ignored in discussions like these), but when one
pops up that is selected, it is still the result of a FIRST CAUSE that is PURE
CHANCE.
So Denton is right, it seems to me.
Jim