Lima-de-Faria (LdF) focuses almost all his attention on form, showing page after page of biological forms that look similar to crystals and such. He puts an extraordinary amount of emphasis on form over function, though he does talk about function in the book. (I'm going to have to read it again. [sigh]) But one of his statements I remember was something like: Evolution happens faster and more efficiently than neo-Darwinian selection implies.
Now, having seen this article: Form or function? Evolution takes different paths http://www.physorg.com/news189697308.html And in my earlier vein of trying to suggest that the concept of selection must have been much refined since LdF wrote his book ("Evolution Without Selection: Form and Function by Autoevolution" 1990), perhaps we divide up the aspects of evolution into blocks, some of which happen very fast (epigenetics?) and some of which happen very slow (physiogenes)? Would such a conjecture be related to multilevel selection? It would seem to me that things that happen slow would be mediated by a large pool (big group) and things that happen fast, by a small pool. Are such analyses a normal part of that body of theory? -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
