>>On Wed, 2 Jun 1999, Bertvan commented:
>>
>>> I''d be interested in hearing comments about the
>>> following web site:
>>> http://www.scientificamerican.com/0997issue/0997infocus.html
>>>
>>> It seems to me somewhere in this research lies an area of compromise.
>>> Creationists could find room for claiming it was part of of God's design.
>>> Agnostics could settle for Nature's design. ...
>>
>>No doubt different people will focus on different aspects of this
>>research. The people who are most under pressure are the
>>Neodarwinists - the research findings do not fit neatly into their
>>theory.
>
>that's funny, when I read the article above, the scientists involved didn't
>sound like they were under pressure. They sounded fascinated and
>interested. And I couldn't quite figure out what part of the interesting
>new problem is non-Darwinian--other than the fact that Darwin didn't know
>anything about genes.
>
It is also funny in the sense that creationists often argue that
evolution cannot work on account of mutations being random. Now
that cases of directed mutation appear to have been documented
we find that this is suddenly a problem. How so?
The important point here is that undirected mutations is not
itself a part of neo-Darwinism. Natural selection can work
regardless of whether the mutations are random or directed.
Further, as the results of this study show, whether mutations
are directed or undirected is a question that can be addressed
empirically, i.e. it is not just assumed _a priori_ as some
creationists have claimed.
Brian Harper
Associate Professor
Applied Mechanics
The Ohio State University
"All kinds of private metaphysics and theology have
grown like weeds in the garden of thermodynamics"
-- E. H. Hiebert