Random Mutation as Driver of Evolution

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Random mutation is a very inefficient means of driving evolution, since most mutations are not adaptive. Why hasn't life over the eons hit upon a more efficient means of evolving?

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Type: Question • Score: 11 • Views: 6,693 • Replies: 71

[+4] - wandeljw - 07/30/2010[quote="Intrepid"] From the same Wiki article ~ Darwin confessed, "To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances,...
[+3] - Intrepid - 07/30/2010Although a popular scientific belief, it seems unlikely that random mutations and genetic accidents have resulted in what we see today.
[+3] - Thomas - 07/31/2010Just for its trivia value, the way Intrepid played this quote about the eye is a classic example of what Richard Dawkins calls "mining the Eddington concession" Arthur Eddington, an...

@bonacquist,

The present system has worked quite nicely.
Joe(Messiness has clear advantages)Nation

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@bonacquist,

Although a popular scientific belief, it seems unlikely that random mutations and genetic accidents have resulted in what we see today.

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@bonacquist,

bonacquist wrote:

Random mutation is a very inefficient means of driving evolution, since most mutations are not adaptive. Why hasn't life over the eons hit upon a more efficient means of evolving?

Evolution is NOT driven by random mutation. Mutations happen but it is natural selection that drives evolution. An evolutionary change that helps an organism to survive in a particular ecosystem gets passed on to future generations. Successful adaptations are thus connected to the specifics of a natural environment. Natural selection is anything BUT random.

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@wandeljw,

From the same Wiki article ~

Darwin confessed, "To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree."

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@bonacquist,

bonacquist wrote:

Random mutation is a very inefficient means of driving evolution, since most mutations are not adaptive. Why hasn't life over the eons hit upon a more efficient means of evolving?

Why would it? It's not a design with someone driving it - always looking for a better way. As substances interact with each other and they're environment they remain slaves to those conditions in which they exist and interact. How might there have been 'sought' a better way? What has happened is a slave to its conditions..

... and whose to say that what *has* happened isn't the most (or least) efficient? Further, what has efficiency to do with anything? The principles of evolution have - in various parts - suggestions of efficiency. But neither what we know nor what has been could even be called efficient in any context. Its so hard to peel out of the context of the world as we see it. Very much like the fawning praise for the "Beauty of Our Bodies" or "the miracle of our minds"; what we have is FAR from the best.. .hell, it might be far from the worst.

Its a mindset we can't comprehend. My vision's restricted to those trees around me, how might I grasp the forest at large? Going further... how might I assess efficiency in the forest at large when I can't even see it?

So... good thoughts, but a question to which no answer has meaning or validity.

Thanks

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@Intrepid,

Intrepid wrote:

From the same Wiki article ~

Darwin confessed, "To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree."

You omitted more than half of Darwin's explanation concerning the eye:

Quote:

To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound.

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@bonacquist,

bonacquist wrote:

Random mutation is a very inefficient means of driving evolution, since most mutations are not adaptive. Why hasn't life over the eons hit upon a more efficient means of evolving?

Life's main goal is to survive. It has nothing to do with efficiency. Redundancy and variations allow for more chances to survive.

Look at it this way. It's more efficient to only send one computer in a spacecraft but it's safer to send up 3 so you have backup if the first two fail.

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@bonacquist,

bonacquist wrote:

Random mutation is a very inefficient means of driving evolution, since most mutations are not adaptive. Why hasn't life over the eons hit upon a more efficient means of evolving?

In a way, life HAS come up with a more efficient way. Sexual selection as well as accumulated information in the gene pool have altered the evolutionary equation from when things started at replicative molecules.

As I'm sure others have already explained, Random Mutation is not the driving factor in evolution. It's just one of many factors which are acted upon by Natural Selection.

The other important thing to realize is that there is a LOT of potential variation already present in the genome which does NOT require any mutation to occur before it can be expressed. Simple gene mixing during reproduction amplified by the mixing that occurs with sexual reproduction is sufficient to provide a wide variety of morphological change which can be acted upon by Natural Selection. Whole Genera of organisms can arise without any mutation at all. The gene pool itself already contains a huge potential for variation.

See the following thread for more details: http://able2know.org/topic/18917-1

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@wandeljw,

I'm sure Intrepid left out that portion because, um.... his finger slipped on the Cut/Paste Button.
Joe(heh heh)Nation

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@Joe Nation,

Joe Nation wrote:

I'm sure Intrepid left out that portion because, um.... his finger slipped on the Cut/Paste Button.
Joe(heh heh)Nation

Actually I posted enough for my point.

Intrep(everything is done with a purpose)id

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@Intrepid,

Intrepid wrote:

Joe Nation wrote:

I'm sure Intrepid left out that portion because, um.... his finger slipped on the Cut/Paste Button.
Joe(heh heh)Nation

Actually I posted enough for my point.

Intrep(everything is done with a purpose)id

Apparently, your point was to be deceptive.

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@wandeljw,

Nope

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@Intrepid,

What is your point, then?

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@InfraBlue,

Since "my point" seems to be getting more attention that the thread itself I will say that my point was simply that even Darwin allowed for error in his theory. Carry on.

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@Intrepid,

Intrepid wrote:

Since "my point" seems to be getting more attention that the thread itself I will say that my point was simply that even Darwin allowed for error in his theory. Carry on.

Darwin, like all scientists, was honest about the possibility of error. The sentence you quoted, however, is about something else. He said it SEEMS absurd that the eye evolved through natural selection. Most readers would be looking for what else he has to say on this subject. The part that you omitted begins "Yet reason tells me...." Common courtesy to the reader would be to follow up Darwin's prefatory remark with the main point of his explanation.

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@wandeljw,

wandeljw wrote:

Intrepid wrote:

Since "my point" seems to be getting more attention that the thread itself I will say that my point was simply that even Darwin allowed for error in his theory. Carry on.

Darwin, like all scientists, was honest about the possibility of error. The sentence you quoted, however, is about something else. He said it SEEMS absurd that the eye evolved through natural selection. Most readers would be looking for what else he has to say on this subject. The part that you omitted begins "Yet reason tells me...." Common courtesy to the reader would be to follow up Darwin's prefatory remark with the main point of his explanation.

I agree Wand.

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@rosborne979,

Me too. Patently dishonest.

Joe(Now I'd like to hear a fess up.)Nation

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@bonacquist,

bonacquist wrote:

Random mutation is a very inefficient means of driving evolution, since most mutations are not adaptive.

I disagree with this premise of your question. As a physicist-turned-engineer, both professions whose practicioners supposedly "create" things, I can tell you that much of our legwork consists of trial and error---basically another word for random-ish mutation of what's already there, followed by selection by whether it works. The process is more efficient than you seem to think.

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@bonacquist,

Quote:

It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

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Random Mutation as Driver of Evolution

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