Here's how I see it

[Shiner]

It's nice to find this forum.

I believe that God created each kind of organism with intelligent design and inherent wisdom. He also instilled each creature with an adaptive phenotype so that all created animals could multiply and fill the earth by spreading out into many different environments and habitats. The advantage of this is obvious: Rather than having to wait thousands or millions of years for the correct mutation to provide the necessary genes, God made it so animals can adjust themselves on-the-fly to changing environments.....and then if these environments continue, the biological adjustments will be passed on to future generations.

It's a brilliantly simple idea that science simply refuses to test. In fact, this concept petrifies evolutionists to the core. Have you ever noticed how neo-darwinists never even discuss adaptive phenotypes or the ability of new traits to arise during development via the environment? Never. Oh, occasionally you might hear the word "saltationism" or "Lamarckism" thrown about in a negative tone, but evolutionists rarely have the guts to face reality to dive into these subjects deeply. In fact, I have never read an in-debth discussion about plasticity or environmentally induced biological changes in a neo-darwinist's book. And it's not that these people are dumb.....They're just simply too afraid to go there, in fear of planting seeds in people's minds. Their whole world-view depends on people's faith in their thoery -- and that there are no reasonable alternatives. So they just play like the alternative isn't there.

But if it can shown that animals' evolve/change in a different way than what evolutionists say, then their theory must be overthrown. They say the evolution of new traits happens gradually through the population over thouands/millions of years through random mutation via selection...I say it happens instantly, within the lifetime of the individual animal...no selection needed.

I also say new traits emerge in offspring nonrandomly in response to environmental cues. These traits form during development or even afterwards during the lifetime of the animal. New traits can be a result of plasticity or in the form of mutation during development. If the mutation occurs in somatic cells, only the individual (parent) organism is affected. If the mutation occurs in the germ cell, the mutation may pass on to the next generation -- though not necessarily expressed in the parent in which it arose.

It's as simple as that.

Both of these mechanisms I present are not new...I did not dream them up. It's just that evolutionists choose to ignore them.

So here's my proof:

new traits (fur color) formed instantly in offspring via diet of mother:

http://www.biotech-info.net/moms_diet.html

new traits form (moth wing pattern) during development based on external conditions, including background colors. (see bottom picture.) By the way, this disproves the peppered moth as an example of "proof" of Natural Selection.

http://ourfcs.friendscentral.org/moths/ ... nism1.html

Can evolutionists lead me to a link where a controlled experiment on animals was done?....where they tested to see what traits formed upon an environemental change??

I'd also like to see a controlled test done on animals that shows Natural Selection in action.

[Rob]

Even if god directs the mutations, they still occur in random patterns. It is not that evolutionists "want" life to be un-directed. It's that the data show no hint of direction, and the chemistry shows no mechanism by which direction could occur. We're kinda stuck with what the data show.

Putting aside the philosophical question of ultimate origins, and recognizing that the "God did it!" claim does not address the "How it happened?" on the material biological level of reality, a question science can and is answering, Jose is simply repeating the standard panselectionist dogma that "the data show no hint of direction, and the chemistry shows no mechanism by which direction could occur." Both of these statements are false, and ignore the statements of scientists who are questioning this panselectionist dogma based upon the fluctuating and random distributions of point mutations observed in population genetics, and the self-conscious choice to ignore the rising tide of evidence regarding the Regulatory Genome and the recent findings (every bit as hard science and based on "chemistry") of Evolutionary Developmental Biology.

Jose is simply parroting a simplistic dogmatic argument of panselectionism while ignoring the fact that scientists have uncovered the chemical basis of core genetic pathways that have provided internal direction in patterned and non-random evolution of form in time and space. It makes for a cool sound bite in argument against simplistic "God did it!" arguments put forward by creationists, but would fall flat on its face in room full of intelligent biologists knowledge of the full breadth of the field as it stands today. Jose claims "chemistry shows no mechanism by which direction could occur," but the discovery of the Regulatory Genome and Genetic Networks and Genetic Pathways that extend back to the first single celled organisms, is clearly being claimed to be the basis of just such a mechanism. For those interested, I recomend you read the recent work by Eric H. Davidson, The Regulatory Genome: Gene Regulatory Networks In Development and Evolution:

Animal body plans, their structures and the functions with which their morphology endows them, are the integrals over time and space of their successive developmental processes.... At the outside, development is mediated by the spatial and temporal regulation of expression of thousands of genes that encode the diverse proteins of the organism, and that catalyze the creation of its nonprotein constituents. Deeper in is a dynamic progression of regulatory states, defined by the presence and state of activity in the cell nuclei of particular sets of DNA-recognizing regulatory proteins (transcription factors), which determine gene expression. At the core is the genomic apparatus that encodes the interpretation of these regulatory states. Physically, the core apparatus consists of the sum of the modular DNA sequence elements that interact with transcription factors. These regulatory sequences "read" the information conveyed by the regulatory state of the cell, "process" that information, and enable it to be transduced into instructions that can be utilized by the biochemical machines for expressing genes that all cells possess. The sequence content, arrangement, and other aspects of the organization of these modular control elements are the heritage of each species. They contain the sequence-specific code for development; and they determine the particular outcome of developmental processes, and thus the form of the animal produced by every embryo. In evolution, the alteration of body plans is caused by changes in the organization of this core genomic code for developmental gene regulation. (Davidson 2006: 1-2)

... [T]he system level organization of the core genomic regulatory apparatus, and how this is the locus of causality underlying the twin phenomena of animal development and animal evolution. Because the sequence of the DNA regulatory elements is the same in every cell of each organism, the regulatory genome can be thought of as hardwired, and genomic sequence may be the only thing in the cell that is. Indeed that is a required property of gene regulatory elements, for they must endow each gene with the information-receiving capacity that enables it to respond properly to every conditional regulatory state to which it might be exposed during all phases of the life cycle, and in all cell types. For development, and therefore for major aspects of evolution, the most important part of the core control system is that which determines the spatial and temporal expression of regulatory genes. As used here, "regulatory genes" are those encoding the transcription factors that interact with the specific DNA sequence elements of the genomic control apparatus. The reason that the regulation of genes encoding transcription factors is central to the whole core system is, of course that these genes generate the determinant regulatory states of development. (Davidson 2006: 2)

There follow several important and general principles of organization of the developmental regulatory apparatus, that is, of the control machinery directing expression of the regulatory genes themselves. First, signaling affects regulatory gene expression: The intercellular signals upon which spatial patterning of gene expression commonly depends in development must affect transcription of regulatory genes, or else they could not affect regulatory state. Therefore, the transcriptional termini of the intracellular signal transduction pathways required in development are located in the genomic regulatory elements that determine expression of genes encoding transcription factors. Second, developmental control systems have the form of gene regulatory networks: Since when they are expressed given transcription factors always affect multiple target genes, and since the control elements of each regulatory gene respond to multiple kinds of incident regulatory factor, the core system has the form of a gene regulatory network. That is, each regulatory gene has both multiple inputs (from other regulatory genes) and multiple outputs (to other regulatory genes), so each can be conceived as a node of the network. Third, the nodes of these genes regulatory networks are unique: Though it is not a priori obvious, each network node performs a unique job in contributing to overall regulatory state, in that its inputs are a distinct set, just as the factor it produces has a distinct set of target genes. Fourth, regulatory genes perform multiple roles in development: The repertoire of regulatory genes is evolutionarily limited, and all animals use more or less the same assemblage of DNA binding domains, which define the classes of transcription factor. However, given factors are frequently required for different processes in different forms of development, and they are often used for multiple unrelated purposes within the life cycle. Thus, both within and among animal species, many regulatory genes must be able to respond to diverse regulatory inputs that are presented in various space/time places in the developing organism. (Davidson 2006: 2-3)

-- Davidson, Eric H. The Regulatory Genome: Gene Regulatory Networks in Development and Evolution. Amsterdam: Academic Press; 2006; pp. 1-3.

A general character of genomic programs for development is that they progressively regulate their own readout, in contrast, for example, to the way architects' programs (blueprints) are used in constructing buildings. All of the structural characters of an edifice, from its overall form to local aspects such as placement of wiring and windows, are prespecified in an architectural blueprint. At first glance the blueprints for a complex building might seem to provide a good metaphoric image for the developmental regulatory program that is encoded in the DNA. Just as in considering organismal diversity, it can be said that all the specificity is in the blueprints: A railway station and a cathedral can be built of the same stone, and what makes the difference in form is the architectural plan. Furthermore, in bilaterian development, as in an architectural blueprint, the outcome is hardwired, as each kind of organism generates only its own exactly predictable, species-specific body plan. But the metaphor is basically misleading, in the way the regulatory program is used in development, compared to how the blueprint is used in construction. In development it is as if the wall, once erected, must turn around and talk to the ceiling in order to place the windows in the right positions, and the ceiling must use the joint with the wall to decide where its wires will go, etc. The acts of development cannot all be prespecified at once, because animals are multicellular, and different cells do different things with the same encoded program, that is, the DNA regulatory genome. In development, it is only the potentialities for cis-regulatory information processing that are hardwired in the DNA sequence. These are utilized, conditionally, to respond in different ways to the diverse regulatory states encountered (in our metaphor that is actually the role of the human contractor, who uses something outside of the blueprint, his brain, to select the relevant subprogram at each step). The key, very unusual feature of the genomic regulatory program for development is that the inputs it specifies in the cis-regulatory sequences of its own regulatory and signaling genes suffice to determine the creation of new regulatory states. Throughout, the process of development is animated by internally generated inputs. "Internal" here means not only nonenvironmental--i.e., from within the animal rather than external to it but also, that the input must operate in the intranuclear compartments as a component of regulatory state, or else it will be irrelevant to the process of development. (Davidson 2006: 16-17)

-- Davidson, Eric H. wip. The Regulatory Genome: Gene Regulatory Networks in Development and Evolution. Amsterdam: Academic Press; 2006; pp. 16-17.

To see just the tip of the iceburg see Evolutionary Developmental Biology, Essence of Darwinism and Basis of Modern Orthodoxy. For a history of the development of the panselectionist dogma Jose espouses on this site, see Gregory on Panselectionism.

[Cathar1950]

Jose:

Begging your pardon, Cathar, but even with mutagens, the locations of mutations are placed randomly. That's what we mean when we say mutations are "random." In these discussions, I get the sense that many people use "random" to mean "without cause," but that's not what it means. There are always causes for mutations (the most common of which, I think, is chemical damage by oxygen). If we re-think "random" to mean "we can't see a pattern to the locations of mutations," then we lose a lot of the theological dispute. God may have caused the mutations, for all we know (he's supposed to be powerful enough to do so, after all), but we still can't detect a pattern. Mutations occur statistically at random.

Fine, I will give you that; I kind of depend on you scientists to fill in the gaps and set things straight. I do not mean “random” equals “without cause”. I just mean mutation can be cause on purpose or increased due to chemicals radiation and environmental pressures. I do want to stress that we do not know which is going to work better for the organism or its kind until we see the population increase and that can have diminishing returns such as eating up their environment. “Mutations occur statistically at random” absolutely but they can be increased or maybe even decreased. At present it still seems they occur at a steady rate that is not dependents on the amount of radiation or chemicals added. Change just happens for all kinds of reasons. But change happens and I guess it is a good thing in the long haul if you are a living organism and desire offspring. Thanks for clearing this up.
Having Skin pigment is a mutation while adapting after acquiring the mutation is adapting using the skin pigmentation.
Change is good if you live and it helps your offspring live at least for you species. It might not be good for dodo Birds or the great auk. Natural history is the final judge of success.

Jose:

The "non-random" mutations this guy refers to are, in fact, random.

Thank you for writing it clearly and fixing the output of my sometime fuzzy headed mind.

[Jose]

Thank you for writing it clearly and fixing the output of my sometime fuzzy headed mind.

Very graciously phrased. I didn't really mean your output was fuzzy; I will certainly admit to having used your phrasing as a jumping off point for a more general discussion of what "randomness" is.

It's interesting, by the way, to see Rob's interpretation of the term, "random." He claims I speak falsely by noting that the data show random distributions of mutations, and justifies his claim of falseness by lamenting that I "ignore the statements of scientists who are questioning this panselectionist dogma based upon the fluctuating and random distributions of point mutations observed in population genetics." This must be a different way of using the term "random," since it seems to me that these population geneticists who find "random distributions of point mutations" are part of the crowd whose data I mention in speaking of random distributions of mutations.

[Jose]

Thanks, Rob. It's always fun hearing from you.

I might note that, while Eric talks about the functions, inputs, and targets of regulatory genes, his discussion of what these genes do has no bearing on the chemistry of DNA adduct formation by mutagenic chemicals.

But then, if I understand your overall message since you've joined us, it's that there are intelligences guiding evolution, and the evidence is that genes are shared among species. By casting the argument in terms of Devo-Evo (the intersection of developmental biology and evolution), and by invoking the complexity of regulatory gene networks, it is possible to obfuscate the issues via complex science.

It's handy, I suppose, to present anyone who speaks otherwise as a member of some outmoded group of dimwits who cling tenaciously to archaic thought. It's also handy, I suppose, to paste in lengthy quotes from others rather than presenting a cogent argument directly. It provides an appearance of erudition to the argument, and implies that a reader who can't find the argument in the quotes must not understand what was quoted.

In any event, I've never heard Eric talk about mutations as being guided by an unseen force to "just the right genes" to make evolution proceed in any pre-planned direction. He would be horrified to learn that he has been quoted in support of the idea that oxygen radicals are somehow imbued with the intelligence not only to mutate Hox genes specifically, but to do so only at the appointed time.

I suspect that you are conflating "mutation" and "selection," of which the latter is directional. But, we could clear this up easily if we just had Bill and Ted's phone booth.

[Cathar1950]

Thank you for writing it clearly and fixing the output of my sometime fuzzy headed mind.

Very graciously phrased. I didn't really mean your output was fuzzy; I will certainly admit to having used your phrasing as a jumping off point for a more general discussion of what "randomness" is.

It's interesting, by the way, to see Rob's interpretation of the term, "random." He claims I speak falsely by noting that the data show random distributions of mutations, and justifies his claim of falseness by lamenting that I "ignore the statements of scientists who are questioning this panselectionist dogma based upon the fluctuating and random distributions of point mutations observed in population genetics." This must be a different way of using the term "random," since it seems to me that these population geneticists who find "random distributions of point mutations" are part of the crowd whose data I mention in speaking of random distributions of mutations.

Nothing gracious about it; I completely missed it on the finer ideas of the concept of random as I was trying to explain change and mutation need not only be from radiation alone or that a mutation may not have a know cause in all instances. It is an important point and part of the concept that evolution has no particular or ultimate goal in mind at least as far as we can see. It is also not always understood that all statistical prediction is from historical data and projecting it on the future does not work except by chance and the odds (probability). I kept getting the feeling we were being told that only random mutations cause change and this seemed a less then adequate understanding of evolution or change. At some time in our biological evolutionary history both plants and animals, or even a common ancestor developed the mutations that allowed the organism to adapt to the environment in at least limited ways. This seems a good thing if your goal is as a species or life form wants a continuance of the experience via offspring. Maybe crystals do this to or all molecules and even atoms. That might be an interesting as well as frustration topic. I expect my scientist friends to keep me in line as I would my philosophical or religious/non-religious friends. If I think you say something crazy I am sure I will say something and I expect the same out of everyone else. Being an agnostic Gnostic has certain advantages in that I don’t have to be completely sane while being a Radical Empiricist keeps me grounded as well as open. I just have the better of all the one worlds(non-dualist).
So if I screw something up feel free to fix it…. Thanks, and Same for the rest of you nerds.

[QED]

Rob, whenever you lambast me for my naive concepts of evolution by natural selection I'm always looking for an actual argument that demonstrates why the "more recent" developmental aspects can't be subsumed into the "outmoded" panselectionist view. Sticking to as plain a language as I can, to my (very simple) mind natural selection can and will "discover" efficient ways of going about the business of filling the world with life -- no matter how convoluted or multi-tiered the adopted methods. And because we seem to have a radiation of "designs for life" coming from some narrower initial focus I feel that we should also expect to see some core set of "fancy tricks" keeping all organisms on the pathway of existence alongside other mechanisms that address the needs of different organisms to thrive in their own particular habitats.

It seems to me then that, far from being too simplistic, panselectionism could represent the master principle that supplies the "design" of the entire suite of natural design tools. I look forward to a well reasoned explanation of why this is not so.

[Shiner]

[quote="goat"][quote="Shiner"]Every creature has the same "fitness"? Every creature has the same chance of survival in any given environment upon birth? Hardly.



well....let's see, goat. You couldn't answer this.....

Hardly? Ok...can you pick out which of these seagulls is most "fit"?

http://cv.mojado.org/archives/underneath%20seagulls.jpg

You didn't answer this:


So if I go down to mexico and drink their water and then get Montezuma's revenge....will I continue to get sick for my whole life? Will generations of people after me continue to get sick from drinking the water because their bodies' haven't received the accidental mutation yet? Or, will my body adjust on-the-fly by being adaptive?......allowing me to eventually not get sick on Mexico's water.....

I think we both know the answer. There is no selection involved. It's an adaptive mutation. Darn.

You didn't address this:

Bacteria is an example of an adaptive mutation -- just like my example of Montezuma's revenge. this is not the type of mutation that could contribute to evolution.

all you did was change the subject:

What is your definition of evolution.

This is merely a definition....

As for the seagul that is 'fitest'..they are those that survive and reproduce better than those that fall out of the gene pool (on average).

I was looking to see if you could tell me which one is most fit -- because I contend they are all more or less the same. Surely you can point out the fittest of that group.

Then you have the gall to say this:


Why are you going from forum to forum to forum with the exact same set of posts, which you don't really respond to the responses?


Why did you even bother to respond? ARe you here to debate science or what?[/i]

[Goat]

Every creature has the same "fitness"? Every creature has the same chance of survival in any given environment upon birth? Hardly.



well....let's see, goat. You couldn't answer this.....

Hardly? Ok...can you pick out which of these seagulls is most "fit"?

http://cv.mojado.org/archives/underneath%20seagulls.jpg

You didn't answer this:


So if I go down to mexico and drink their water and then get Montezuma's revenge....will I continue to get sick for my whole life? Will generations of people after me continue to get sick from drinking the water because their bodies' haven't received the accidental mutation yet? Or, will my body adjust on-the-fly by being adaptive?......allowing me to eventually not get sick on Mexico's water.....

I think we both know the answer. There is no selection involved. It's an adaptive mutation. Darn.

You didn't address this:

Bacteria is an example of an adaptive mutation -- just like my example of Montezuma's revenge. this is not the type of mutation that could contribute to evolution.

all you did was change the subject:

What is your definition of evolution.

This is merely a definition....

As for the seagul that is 'fitest'..they are those that survive and reproduce better than those that fall out of the gene pool (on average).

I was looking to see if you could tell me which one is most fit -- because I contend they are all more or less the same. Surely you can point out the fittest of that group.

Then you have the gall to say this:


Why are you going from forum to forum to forum with the exact same set of posts, which you don't really respond to the responses?


Why did you even bother to respond? ARe you here to debate science or what?[/i]

I did address. It isn't my fault if you refuse to understand the answer.

[Rob]

But then, if I understand your overall message since you've joined us, it's that there are intelligences guiding evolution.

Nope, apparently Jose you don't understand much, as those are your words, not mine. My words are pretty darn clear. I said,

Putting aside the philosophical question of ultimate origins, and recognizing that the "God did it!" claim does not address the "How it happened?" on the material biological level of reality, a question science can and is answering.

The question of whether there are "intelligences" (your words, not mine) "guiding evolution" is NOT a scientific question. But then you know that Jose as we have both stated as much on this very site, and that is pretty clear in the statement above, isn't it. (You have yourself acknowleded on this site it is a philosophical question, not a scientific question, and I have made that clear numerous times, but once again, you ignore that fact. Why?) After all, as I said, "'How it happened?' on the material biological level of reality, a question science can and is answering." Science by its very nature is limited to investigating the material basis of evolution via physio-chemical, biochemistry, genetics, paleontology, geology, phylo-genetics, and evolutionary developmental biology, [insert your specialization here] which encompasses many of these fields. Evolutionary Devlopmental Biology is pure science, and it has not one iota to do with claiming "intelligences [are] guiding evolution," but rather with uncoving the biological/chemical/regulatory gemomic basis of evolution -- change in morphololgy from one phyla to another in time and space. After all, that IS what we really mean by evolution, not whether we can select for large and short wings on fruit flys, which is simply an example of altering already existing morphological features in insignificant ways, a process which Panselectionists then extrapolate as the cause of major changes in morphology from one phyla to another. (See Gregory). The next stage in the evolution of evolutionary theory is how the findings of Evolutionary Developmental Biology are going to modify the Modern Synthesis of Biology, hence the reason Reid's subtitle, "The Unfinished Synthesis."

Nice try Jose, but we have been down that path before, and you appear unable to grapple with the new scientific evidence comming out of Evolutionary Developmental Biology that there is a growing body of evidence that "Throughout, the process of development is animated by internally generated inputs. "Internal" here means not only nonenvironmental," and that they are now arguing this "internal" Regulatory Genome and changes therein are responsible for evolution (change in morphology from one phyla to another), and that this "internal organization" of the Regulatory Genome and these core "evolutionary processess" act to "sort internal variation [to] produce nonrandom morphological variation in evolution." Because of the growing body of scientific knownledge we are gaining new insights into the origin and cause of variation, and how this variation is related to the Regulatory Genome. But much of this new information is short of useless for those who have hardned their views into the Panselectionist views and simply repeat the same old tired dogma without any critical evaluation of the mass of new information being published on an almost monthly basis.

I present the mechanistic issues posed by the hypothesis that the internal architecture of the genome and of developmental processes and their controls constrains the course of evolution. This issue is a central one in the study of development and evolution. If externally applied natural selection is the only force required to produce evolutionary change, then developmental processes don't matter except as features upon which selection can act. If internal organization and processes govern modes of change, then development must be incorporated into any complete theory of evolution. I propose that internal organization and a set of distinct evolutionary processes acting to sort internal variation produce nonrandom morphological variation in evolution.

-- Raff, Rudolf A. The Shape of Life: Genes, Development, and the Evolution of Animal Form. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 1996; p. xviii.

The fact is, as is noted by numerous biologists past and present, their is growing awareness of the failure of the Panselectionist parroting of the claim the the cause of evolution is "random point mutation" in light of the growing body of evidence of the internal nonrandom morphological variation resulting from the organization and existence of the Regulatory Genome. These are hard core scientists raising these questions, not creationists. The irony is that creationists are aware of the same perplexity and questionable nature of this dogmatic Panselectionist claim, but they err in that they lack an appreciation for the wealth of knowledge with proves beyond a reasonable doubt that organic evolution is a fact, and then jump to the false conclusion that if Neo-Darwinian theory (Panselectionism) has flaws then the entire structure of evolutionary theory is and organic evolution itself is in question. Not so, only the narrow Neo-Darwinian (panselectionist) mechanism is being question by scientists, not the fact of organic evolution. What we are seeing in the field is a hardening (of the mental arteries) at two extremes: the creationists and the hard-core Panselectionist Neo-Darwinians (they have much in common), while the more creative scientists are able to grasp a larger understanding of broader issues with the various fields of evolutionary studies, hence you end up with scientists like Gregory who as a genetist is able to appreciate the new scientific studies forthcoming out of Evolutionary Developmental Biology.

Apparrenlty for Neo-Darwinian Panselectionists like Jose, he can only see (and sing) two tunes. If it ain't Neo-Darwinian Panselectionist "random point mutation" (i.e., population genetics) than it must be creationism or Intelligent Design (or at least he attempts to label it as such).

The arguments being made regarding the Regulatory Gemome vs. Neo-Darwinian Panselectionism are being debated within the scientific community and have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the creationsm vs. evolutionism debate raging seperately.

My basic position is let the scientists do science; they are having lively (and healthy I think) debates amongst themselves, and in the end I am confident the overwhemling evidence will lead to new levels of understanding. After all, old Panselectionists will eventually die off, and new, younger, and more aware scientists who can appreciate the evidence arising from the fields of Evolutionary Developmental biology will eventually bring about the mature phase of the scientific revolution we are now smack in the middle of debating, with classic hard core polemics on both sides of the fence. I rather enjoy, as a historian of science, watching the show:

The most entertaining aspect of modern discussions of evolution ... is presently a polemical battleground.

But they (scientists) are not battling over the fact of organic evolution, just the paths and mechanisms. And I don't have much sympathy for the creationist camp, and would challenge them to really become familiar with the field of Evolutionary Developmental Biology if they desire to know more about the mechanism of evolution in morphology.

[Shiner]

Rob...that's an interesting post.

I guess I would be one of those all-or-nothing people. Can you explain to me how a structuralist could possibly be an evolutionist? I mean I have no doubt that it happens, but I don't see how.....because if each animal is its own entity...and each entity evolves from the same environmental cues, then how could selection possibly act on this? -- each creature would be, in essense, in the same basic stage of "evolution." -- thus there would be little, if any, differences in fitness...which would make selection more or less a lottery. And without selection being a nonrandom phenomenon, then there is no evolution. S