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Chapter 11 - How physics fakes design

from Part IV - Function, adaptation, and design

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2014

By
Alex Rosenberg
Edited by
R. Paul Thompson  and
Denis Walsh
R. Paul Thompson
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Denis Walsh
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Summary

Physicalism needs to show that it is only through the operation of the laws of physics that adaptation can emerge. This chapter attempts to show that physics is necessary and sufficient for all adaptations, and that the only way they can emerge consistently with physics is by natural selection. Darwinism needs to show that the only way adaptations can ever happen even the most trivial and earliest of adaptation is by natural selection working on zero adaptation. It needs to demonstrate that, given the constraints of physics, adaptation could have no other source than natural selection. Physics is sufficient for adaptation by natural selection. The evolution and maintenance of adaptations by natural selection wins the prize for greatest efficiency in carrying out the second law's mandate to create disorder. This is a fact about natural selection insufficiently realized and not widely enough publicized in biology.

Keywords

sociological studiesmythical truthreligious practicereligious truthfictional truthcontemporary atheismethical truth
Type
Chapter
Information
Evolutionary Biology
Conceptual, Ethical, and Religious Issues
 , pp. 217 - 238
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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