Re: progress in evolution

Susan B (susan-brassfield@ou.edu)
Thu, 3 Jun 1999 19:32:45 -0500 (CDT)

>Rich:
>Do you believe that evolution always progresses upward (toward more
>complexity)? Parasites often lose complexity as they evolve from
>free-living organisms.
>
>Bertvan:
>
>I've read arguments that evoltution has no direction, does not result in
>increased complexity. Surely muli celled organisms are more complex than
>single celled organisms.

yes, but there have been multicelled organisms for billions of years. We
seem to have achieved that "pinnacle" early on.

>In mammals, evolution seems to have resulted in an
>increasingly complex central nervous system, culminating in the complexity of
>human consciousness.

I'm not sure our nervous system is more complex than that of other mammals,
especially that of other primates, but I'll have to let someone else
(possibily the person to whom this original note was addressed) answer that.
I'd be curious to see the answer.

Susan
--------
Life is short, but it is also very wide.
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