Neo Darwinism

Bertvan@aol.com
Sun, 10 Oct 1999 10:37:42 EDT

Chris wrote:
Some of them have, in fact, been advocated or supported by neo-darwinists.
Neo-darwinists are not particularly choosy about the naturalistic mechanisms
that evolution may involve. They are willing to allow anything that doesn't
involve design or purpose for the basic process. Whether it is called
"random" or not is partly a semantic issue. The term is misleadingly
ambiguous. "Without purpose" would be better for the naturalistic view,
which does not suggest that there are no patterns, but only that the
patterns are naturalistic patterns. The ID theorist's misuse of the term
"random" should probably be sufficient reason to avoid it's use except when
it is specifically used to mean something like "acausal" or "informationally
incompressible," or "patternless," none of which need apply to neo-darwinist
mechanisms. I doubt that many neo-darwinists believe that evolution is truly
random in the sense implied (and sometimes explicitly asserted) by ID
people.

Hi Chris,

I am trying to nail down a definition of Neo Darwinism.

You say: They are willing to allow anything that doesn't involve design or
purpose for the basic process.

Do all of you Neo Darwinists on the list agree with that? Is it called Neo
Darwinism because that was Darwin's contribution to evolution--that nature
must be basically devoid of purpose?

Bertvan