Re: Nature magazine article- On niches and neutralities

[John Kineman <***>]

Dan,

You wrote:

> I do not totally
> get John's last point about solving evolutionary problems
> functionally vs (what you may be saying) a case by case or
> piecemeal (or mechanistic?) type of evolution. Can you say
> more on this? It sounds interesting...


I was getting at the idea that solving problems via "abstraction"
abilities - i.e., the effect of semi-independent functional definitions
(which we would be most familiar with as thinking, but that would
over-state the basic case), would be more efficient than evolution
strictly by passive selection of random structural (genetic) novelites.
If novelty can be introduced via function as well, this enhances the
Darwinian view. It was the basis for Baldwin's ideas on evolution and
the subject of my 1999 paper where I tried to link Baldwin and Rosen
(but the 99 paper doesn't cite Baldwin because I didn't discover that
historical precedent until the evening before the presentation at ISSS,
having some whisky with Soren Bier). I did put it into subsequent
presentations and a 2001 paper.