Susan
>David Bradbury (or Stephen Jones, I couldn't find the original post):
>
>>2) Your following citation also brings up another interesting, but unrelated
>>thought.
>>
>>"Despite a close watch, we have witnessed no new species emerge in the
>>wild in
>>recorded history. Also, most remarkably, we have seen no new animal
>>species emerge
>>in domestic breeding. That includes no new species of fruitflies
>>in hundreds
>>of millions of generations in fruitfly studies, where both soft and harsh
>>pressures
>>have been deliberately applied to the fly populations to induce speciation.
>>And in computer life, where the term "species" does not yet have
>>meaning, we see
>>no cascading emergence of entirely new kinds of variety beyond an initial
>>burst. In
>>the wild, in
>>breeding, and in artificial life, we see the emergence of variation. But
>>by the
>>absence of greater change, we also clearly see that the limits of
>>variation appear
>>to be narrowly bounded, and often bounded within species. ... No one has yet
>>witnessed, in the fossil record, in real life, or in computer life, the exact
>>transitional moments when natural selection pumps its complexity up to
>>the next
>>level.
>>There is a suspicious barrier in the vicinity of species that either
>>holds back
>>this critical change or removes it from our sight. (Kelly K.,"Out of
>>Control: The
>>New Biology of Machines", 1995, p475)
>>. . .
Chris
Susan, remind me to try to locate my copy of Kelly's book. It's a good
book, but Kelly's not an authority on biology. His book is about
*computers* and such.
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