From: Phil Goetz (philgoetz@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Feb 01 2005 - 19:20:52 MST
--- fudley <fuddley@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> Phil Goetz Wrote:
>
> > there is no tendency for species to increase in
> > complexity over time.
>
> Gould is right that if you pick a species at random
> and examine it you
> will probably find little or no increase in
> complexity over time, but
> looking at an average animal is not very
> interesting. If however you
> look at a series of the very most complex species
> from various eras,
> that is the really interesting ones, I believe you
> can find a general
> increase in complexity over time.
Yes, and the point of the book is that this increase
in the complexity of the most complex species is due
to a random walk with a left wall, not to any
inherent drive in evolution towards increasing
complexity.
- Phil
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