Epigenetics: through phenotype changes? (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, January 17, 2015, 01:16 (3393 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: As always you scurry back to chance v. design and gloss over the issue of the inventive mechanism, which is the point of this particular post on this particular thread. ... My point here, to put it as succinctly as possible, is that an inventive/self-improvement mechanism which doesn't invent/self-improve is not an inventive/self-improvement mechanism. So, to take just one example in conjunction with my post under “Animal Language”, do you still categorically exclude the possibility that the first generation(s) of weaverbirds designed their own nests?-As I have said before, we do not understand the origin of instinctual behavior. What the weaverbirds do now is instinct within their DNA. They didn't design the complex nest we see now all at once. Did they design it gradually over many generations? I don't know. I think they contributed but were helped by a design plan. For me this issue doesn't settle the major of chance or design.