HOW DOES NATURAL SELECTION OPERATE?
Does natural selection proceed according to some overall plan or scheme? In some particular direction, e.g., toward better or higher beings? No, no goal or plan apart from fostering reproductive success. Is it predictable? If not, is the theory of natural selection untestable? Although the course of natural selection is not generally predictable, natural selection leads to many predictions, and so is empirically testable. In what five ways does chance influence natural selection? (1) In the production of a genetic mutation; (2) in whether the bearer lives long enough to show the effects of such a mutation; (3) in chance events that influence the bearer’s reproductive success; (4) in whether a gene happens to be eliminated by accident; and (5) in unpredictable changes in the environment of the group of organisms that the bearer is a member of. If one rewound and then replayed the tape of biological history, would one see the same show? Would there be humans in the replay? The probabilit
