bijna als alice in mydiwonderland & ondertussenin!

~@~
'evo~devo~
vervolg op het voorafgaande:
a long and winding road to go:
don't let it be misunderstood ~ just ...
let it be ...'
~@~

~@~

A fundamental
question raised by evo~devo
- what is the impact of this discipline on our thinking about the evolutionary theory? -
is addressed at the end
of the book.

Here,
I must admit,
I was hoping for some more provocative thoughts!
Sean Carroll's orthodoxy in his belief in Darwinism is sometimes awkwardly close to that expressed
by creationists when arguing
the opposite.

Evo~devo
is presented as an expanatory framework for gradualism -
as a demonstration of the critical importance of selection in the emergence and maintenance
of new forms and
patterns.

There is nothing wrong
with this framework of course,
and a more critical view is understandably difficult to express [even for a reader of Descartes]
when disputes about aspects of evolutionary processes are so often used
by creationists to argue against evolution
itself.

Nonetheless,
the best way to defend a theory is to criticize its unavoidable weaknesses,
and the question of how evo~devo may help in this endeavor
deserved a few paragraphs.

"Endless forms most beautiful,"
the quotation from Charles Darwin used as the book's title,
is by itself a source of confusion?

Does "endless" mean
the never-ending production of novel forms
within a limited set of possibilities {in the past, present, and future}?
OR does it imply that nature can produce a potentially infinite number of forms,
which are then reduced
by natural selectin?

THIS consideration is not merely philological,
as it touches on the realm of possibilities wherein the "CHANCE" of Jacques Monod or the "TINKERING"
of Francois Jacob could take place.

Given that the same genes,
modules, and mechanisms are at work throughout developing animal bodies,
in manyu parts and at different times, can we still think of variation as effecting single parts
of an otherwise unchanged organism?

SC briefly addresses this fundamental issue,
mentioning the diffeiculty in transferring concepts from microevolution
to macroevolution.

However,
he does NOT discuss evo-devo's potential impect
in readjusting the balance from an indefinite variation [the power of selection]
to a perhaps more restricted number of possible variations
imposed by the now-apparent internal constraints
of developmental systems.

~@~