Evolution Is A Process Of Constant Branching

The Myriad Valleys Could Have Arisen Anywhere On The Landscape. The Current Positions Are Quite Accidental. If We Could Repeat The Experiment, We Might Obtain No Valleys At All, Or A Completely Different System. Yet We Now Stand At The Shore Line Contemplating The Fine Spacing Of Valleys And Their Even Contact With The Sea. How Easy It Is To Be Misled And To Assume That No Other Landscape Could Possibly Have Arisen.

We Are The Offspring Of History, And Must Establish Our Own Paths In This Most Diverse And Interesting Of Conceivable Universes—one Indifferent To Our Suffering, And Therefore Offering Us Maximum Freedom To Thrive, Or To Fail, In Our Own Chosen Way.

Darwin's Principle Of Natural Selection Leads To The Prediction That The Proper Way To Analyze Any Evolutionary Development Is To See The New Features As Adaptive To Environments. And That's A Perfectly Good Principle. The Problem Is That There Are Many Evolutionary Biologists Who View Everything That Happens In Evolution As Directly Evolved For Adaptive Benefit. And That Just Doesn't Work. Whenever You Build A Structure For Adaptive Reasons, The Structure Is Going To Exhibit Properties That Have Nothing To Do With Adaptation. They're Just Side Consequences.

Complex Organisms Cannot Be Construed As The Sum Of Their Genes, Nor Do Genes Alone Build Particular Items Of Anatomy Or Behavior By Themselves. Most Genes Influence Several Aspects Of Anatomy And Behavior As They Operate Through Complex Interactions With Other Genes And Their Products, And With Environmental Factors Both Within And Outside The Developing Organism. We Fall Into A Deep Error, Not Just A Harmful Oversimplification, When We Speak Of Genes "for" Particular Items Of Anatomy Or Behavior.

We Must [it Has Been Arued] Go Beyond Reductionism To A Holistic Recognition That Biology And Culture Interpenetrate In An Inextricable Manner.