The Plausibility of Life

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Categories : Front-loading

Editor : MikeGene

published: samedi 16 décembre 2006 5:54:54

Okay, I admit it. I can be slow. Y’see, I just started to seriously read The Plausibility of Life by Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart. What is most striking about this book is that, thus far, it nicely captures many of the new findings in science and evolutionary biology that enhance the plausibility of front-loading evolution. You get a feel for the essence of front-loading from Sean Carroll’s blurb on the back cover – “They suggest further that there is a bias in an organism’s capacity to evolve and in the directions that evolution takes.”

I’ve long stated that front-loading is about channeling, rigging, even guiding evolution, where evolution is not simply a product of RM &NS, but a process whereby RM & NS are under control. The nature and extent of this control are the primary areas of focus for front-loading evolutionists. That Kirschner and Gerhart envision a “bias” and “direction” to evolution helps us to appreciate that evolutionary biology is becoming increasingly friendly to ID. Bias and direction have not really been a major part of the non-teleological perspective of evolution.

Anyway, over the next few weeks, I hope to post some excerpts from The Design, I mean The Plausibility of Life as I read through it, as it will help me mentally index how non-teleological scientists approach an evolutionary process and history that may have been front-loaded/designed.

Evolution, Biology, Science,